SOURCE: Jenkinson, J. R. Introduction to The Satires, translated by J. R. Jenkinson, pp. 1-8. Wiltshire, Eng.: Aris & Phillips, 1980.

[In the following excerpt, Jenkinson explains that Persius was shaped by Stoicism and that his satires are imbued with moral concerns and “continual surprise.”]

The full name of the author whose work is translated below was Aules¹ Persius Flaccus. He has left us (not counting a brief introductory piece) six Latin poems of moderate length in the hexameter metre. Their title, Saturae, is usually translated Satires which, as we shall see, is technically correct. But, influenced as we are by modern presuppositions about the word ‘satire’, we might feel that ‘Sermons’ or ‘Moral Essays’ were titles more aptly descriptive of their main content.

Persius belonged to the well-to-do and landowning gentry of Italy.² He lived between 34 and 62 a.d., passing his adult life under the emperors Claudius and Nero. He was educated in Rome at the best schools; then, as Romans sometimes did in the course of their education,³ he undertook the study of philosophy, attaching himself as pupil to Annaeus Cornutus, an eminent Stoic philosopher, teacher and writer.⁴ The tone and philosophical content of the Satires suggest that he pursued philosophy with an ardour beyond that conventionally thought proper by Romans.⁵

Some details in the ancient Life (see n. 2) suggest that previously he had had aspirations, and had been subject to family influences, which turned him in the direction of philosophy. He was related to the two ladies Arria, the elder of whom was famous for her heroic suicide. This occurred when Persius was eight or thereabouts, and he wrote a boyhood poem in her honour. The younger, her daughter, was wife to the Stoic senator and martyr Thrasea Paetus. Through her, it seems, he had the entrée to Thrasea's house, company and friendship.

Stoicism was a respected philosophy and probably enjoyed a wider following than any western pre-Christian school of thought. It was an elaborate philosophical system whose adherents, especially in the age when Persius lived, advocated and followed its ethical doctrines with a zeal that was virtually religious. The Stoics taught that the universe is divine, intelligible and benevolent and that the individual, by training, care and thought, may know what its nature is and how properly to relate himself and his actions to it. In particular he may understand what is good, and that virtuous states and actions are the supreme good for him. Virtue consists in the proper adjustment of the will to the benevolent Law or Will that informs the universe; and, since virtue resides in the realm of the will and is the true good, it follows that everything which can truly benefit or harm a man is under his own control. Anything external to the control of his will, including considerations such as health, freedom, fame, prosperity and their opposites, the seeking or avoidance of which cause all human passions and sorrows, is not a fit thing for the Stoic to take account of, to be attracted or repelled by. He is, in fact, morally and emotionally independent: ‘… a whole in himself, smooth and rounded, so that nothing external can rest on his polished surface, against whom Fortune, in her onset, is ever maimed.’ ‘… Were the vault of heaven to break and fall upon him, it would strike him undismayed.’⁶ In view of the extent, still more restricted then than now, of man's control of his destiny, the attraction of a philosophy giving this spiritual foothold and orientation is easy to understand. The ramifying details of its ethical teaching and the spirit in which this was carried out can best be experienced by reading Stoic works which are roughly contemporary with Persius, for example the letters of Seneca or the sermons of Epictetus and Musonius Rufus.⁷ They will be found to bear at least a family likeness to the topics and tone of Persius' philosophical poetry.

Stoicism had grown up in the Hellenistic world and was perhaps shaped according to the spiritual needs of the ordinary citizen, who was uninvolved and unimportant in the taking of decisions that affected and controlled his community. It is perhaps natural that it should also include among its many adherents a section of the upper echelons of Roman society during the reigns of Nero and his immediate predecessors and successors. The upper class not only felt itself starved of real political influence but in addition was humiliatingly compelled to hold debate in the senate as if it possessed powers of important decision, and was subjected to the fear that its actions, especially any endeavour to assert real independence, would incur the Emperor's suspicion. Honest men may well have been concerned with a search for self-respect and spiritual direction.

It seems likely that from the beginning of his reign Nero's conduct was not such as to inspire confidence in those whose nominal share in government might call upon them to condone his acts. Persius' friend Thrasea, whose parents-in-law had already suffered death in a conflict with the Throne, chose to hold aloof from elements in the senate which gave eager and exaggerated demonstrations of loyalty, and in 59 a.d. risked the emperor's severe displeasure by a public act of implicit criticism.⁸ A degree of foreboding and isolation, which had its fulfilment only later,⁹ seems likely to have affected the quality of life for Thrasea, his associates and dependants already in Persius' lifetime.

Of all this Persius' poems convey nothing, unless, as seems possible, the political and social environment was in part responsible for their taut sense of the importance of Stoic moral principles. Of the six major poems in his collection, the first deals with Roman tastes and mores in literary matters, and the rest with selected tenets of conventional Stoic doctrine which Persius will have met in private study or in technical or hortatory lectures. And, although it would have been possible to give themes such as the honour of the gods (poem 2), political precocity (poem 4) and moral freedom (poem 5) a topical application, this is missing. His moralising seeks a high level of abstraction from historical events. It is important to realise that his failure to engage in topical comment and polemic is not quite the departure from the traditions of his chosen genre that the modern sense of the title ‘Satire(s)’ would suggest.

The Latin term satura¹⁰ was probably in origin a title, meaning ‘Miscellany’, aptly used by the genre's earliest practitioners to denote a collection of poems that recorded details of the poet's personal experiences and opinions in a wide variety of fields. The poems were written in a lively manner and were illustrated with descriptive and dramatic episodes. Not unnaturally the collections included, among numberless other topics, the consideration of moral themes in the manner of the prevailing philosophies.¹¹

Lucilius (? 168/7-103/2 b.c.), the first major, and in fact the most miscellaneous, writer of satura, had a personality which, given freedom by his high social status and connections, brought into his poetry an element of pungent topical criticism of morals and politics of a type not uncommon in republican Roman literature. It was perhaps owing to the influence of his work and a certain notoriety which these elements in it enjoyed, that satura as a genre-name became associated especially with morals and with topical polemic.¹²

However, the tone of comment and the type of satura which authors aspired to write varied much, and it seems likely that among factors which influenced them was their estimate of what it was possible to write in the social and political environment in which they worked, and what was proper to their social station.

Horace (65-8 b.c.) was the son of a freedman and, when he wrote, the dependant of Augustus. His satura offers little if anything that could be described as political comment, is usually restrained in moral criticism and lays emphasis rather upon general moral theses than upon the castigation of particular present situations or of individuals. The names of persons, where he uses them in criticism, are not those of powerful men and are often fictitious. Also he varied the content of his collection with poems of autobiography, anecdote and literary criticism, probably in an endeavour to broaden the concept of the genre and diminish its association with hostile moral criticism by calling back to life and memory the idea of ‘miscellany’ which had underlain Lucilius' work.

The Stoic preacher Crispinus who figures in Horace's satire also has interest. It seems legitimate to deduce from Horace's references to him¹³ that whatever the public might expect, writings which tended to a general, non-hostile, consideration of ethics could properly be classed as satura.

The title of Persius' work, then, did not promise any certain subject-matter or treatment to a Roman audience, apart from some concern with morals. The tone and method of moral discussion in satura had, in practice, varied considerably, and his sermons bore a family likeness to the practice of other authors in the genre. His literary poem also has a function that was traditional in satura (see Sat. 1, n. 1).

It is clear that the pressures of life under an autocracy made dangerous or unthinkable the wide dissemination, under an author's name, of the political polemic and of much of the pointed social satire that is possible in freer societies.¹⁴ This would account for Persius' choice of an untopical kind of moral comment. On the other hand Persius was reasonably well-connected and he did, in his first poem, venture a portrait of Roman literary tastes, and incidentally of Roman morals, that (in our sense) satirises sections of contemporary society and certainly risked giving offence. Had he wished, it would have been possible for him, while running no significantly greater risk, to write topical moral counterparts to poem 1.¹⁵ If in addition we remember details in the ancient Life which attest his devotion to those who taught him philosophy,¹⁶ his own words on the subject early in poem 5 and the fervent tone of the moral poems as a whole, it is justifiable to believe that the presentation of Stoic doctrines as such, and in a universal way, was Persius' central desire, and that satura suggested itself as a natural and convenient form for his purpose. Since the Life tells us that he wrote ‘… infrequently and slowly’, it seems to be a desire that he pursued with virtually no change for a long period. A corollary of this is that he was never interested, at least to a comparable degree, in the actual public events and situations that are the stuff of topical comment. It seems unlikely that he can have been totally unaware of them.¹⁷ He may have felt repelled or daunted by these aspects of life themselves,¹⁸ rather than by the consequences of commenting upon them. In the event, however, the choice of Stoic themes in a small way representative of the doctrines that stiffened the opposition of the Roman Stoics in Nero's day makes the Satires as fair a memorial to them as some more topically-oriented work would have been.

We need now to ask, in what way has Persius written about his themes, and does the way in which he has written deserve favourable or adverse judgement? These are the crucial questions concerning Persius's Satires. His way of writing is, so far as we know, unique in ancient poetry. His basic themes and many at least of their details are drawn from established doctrine.¹⁹ It is, then, only his mode of presentation which may be used to estimate his stature as a poet.

On the whole Persius has been coolly received in recent times, particularly on account of his lack of lucidity and the untopical nature of his moral writings. However, he not only had warm admirers in antiquity, but was read with appreciation by English satirists at the end of the sixteenth century, who show his influence.²⁰ Further, the present century has seen poets gain repute whose meaning is no more immediately plain than Persius's. These facts suggest that discussions with a view to forming a fresh and detailed estimate of Persius' poetry are desirable. Most recently J. P. Sullivan has indicated lines along which criticism of his use of words can proceed and H. Bardon has written illuminatingly about his use of images.²¹

Images play a very important part in Persius' writing. They are ubiquitous and may be very vivid. Not infrequently there are moderately extended pieces of lucid descriptive or dramatic writing. On the other hand, an explicit framework of logical abstract argument may be totally lacking or may lack emphasis by comparison with the images. The effect of this is that the images are left to do duty in place of the expression of abstract thoughts: “… they do not clothe a thought … on the contrary the thoughts result … from the images.”²² At times they are of some length and complexity. Nevertheless, because they are single images, densely expressed and conveying relevant ideas, the effect is one of economy. Also the image chosen is often arrestingly curious and often apt. From these features of their imagery the poems derive great impact.

Further, the elements of composition in Persius' satires—words and ideas, images, steps in the argument, registers of speech and literary style, speeches in dramatic dialogue—are abruptly or peculiarly, even bizarrely, combined. One is faced by an unpredictable, surprising series of conceptions; continuous attention is necessary if one is to understand. However, the surprises and incongruities are often observably intelligent, apt and curiously artistic.²³

From a literary point of view, the quality of continual surprise in Persius' style makes the Satires amusing to read, just as pieces of intellectual play by John Donne or Gerard Manley Hopkins are elements of one's pleasure in reading their poetry. Persius explored the possibilities of language and poetic expression, and what he achieved could have been a source of literary renewal. It is a pity that his bold experiments seem to have had little if any influence on the subsequent history of Latin poetry.

However, it is important to our evaluation of the poems that they should not be thought of predominantly as examples of literary ingenuity. Couched in an adventurous idiom and manifestly controlled by an intellectual and aesthetic purpose, the statements of Stoic doctrine, fervent and definite, but bare of detailed or deeply-reasoned support, become part of worthwhile artistic objects which have their own authority. Without this blending they would merely be effusions. Moreover, Persius' series of surprising juxtapositions means that the reader must either sacrifice his own, and all ordinary and prosaic modes of thought, or else give up his attempt to read, at least to read seriously.²⁴ The sacrifice, if made, allows him to give imaginative consideration to other modes of thought and to appreciate the poet's conceptions. These, by their combined peculiarity and vividness, are especially fitted to appeal to private quirks of a reader's mind and imagination; and, previously unimagined but now discovered, to convert themselves into his personal possession. In Persius, as in the writings of the two English poets mentioned above, elements which display intellectual and aesthetic control help to convey moral or religious content.

The moral concern which Persius shows in his Satires is for the conduct of life by the individual. His imagery, including the imagery in the narrative and descriptive examples that illustrate his work, is vivid and uses realistic detail, well-observed from life. But quite commonly the examples are not, as those of Horace and Juvenal commonly are, reports of particular events, viewed as happening or having happened, in which people's folly or wickedness is exemplified and made the target of social or topical criticism. Persius tends to use examples which are of a frankly general or imaginary nature, including literary and quasi-literary examples. Some of his images, including possibly his most vivid, are used not primarily as examples of misguided action, but as aids to better definition of philosophic principles (cf. 5.73-131) or to describe the sureness with which they operate (3.88-106). The characters in the examples are often involved in quite humble and ordinary situations. Dislike or condemnation may be apparent in the reporting, and there may be mild caricature, but usually the situations and events are not greatly exaggerated or sensationalised. Upon occasion specific and unexpectedly violent condemnation of these characters (e.g. at 2.39f., 3.15) makes clear the strength of Stoic principle and how universally its demands operate (cf. 5.119f.).²⁵ It is also made clear that ultimately it is not external show, even as constituted by the legalistic performance of duties, that is put to the test by these demands, but the posture of the mind (2.73f., 3.30, 5.93-9, 119-21, 157-60). And it is often implicit, and sometimes explicit, that a person's response to them is a critical matter, productive of beatitude or misery. There is, finally, a common and most significant tendency to phrase example-material in a way which permits or encourages the reader to imagine himself in the situation depicted. This is done predominantly by the use of second-person address, e.g. “You beg strength of muscle …” 2.41. “It's morning and you're snoring peacefully …” 5.132f.

To sum up: Satires 2-6 are forceful meditative sermons in which, together with the nature and importance of moral principles, situations for their application are imaginatively realised, and encouragement is offered to the reader to match his own responses with those situations. The questions and areas of behaviour which the examples illuminate are relevant to the human predicament and individual action: proper conduct towards the powers thought to control the Universe, attitudes to one's own powers, independence in the face of temptation, the use of one's personal resources, and (in Sat. [Satires] 3) the importance of giving due and detailed consideration to all these things.

Finally we may discuss the extent to which the style of the Satires was influenced by their literary environment.

Persius' love of the unexpected has parallels in the Greco-Roman sermon tradition.²⁶ It would equally have been encouraged by the self-conscious stylists of rhetorical declamation, which was fashionable as public entertainment and also formed an essential part of education in Persius' day.²⁷ Persius' individuality is marked, however, by the frequency of unexpected elements in his writing, by the extreme forms of unexpectedness which he employed and, as we have seen, by the vital relationship of these qualities to the meaning and authority of the poems. Worthy of remark, too, is the absence of that luxuriant use of stylistic ornament which is characteristic of the declaimers, and of his contemporary Seneca.²⁸ It is consistent with the poems' sense of urgency and economy that this ornament should be lacking: for it commonly contributes to length without being strictly necessary to the content, and emphasises form rather than meaning. Persius' reaction to this tendency can be read at Sat. 1.85-91.

In Satire I Persius gives us a view of his relationship to some contemporary types of poetry. Because of difficulties of interpretation his meaning at some points is not clear, but its general drift can hardly be in doubt; that subject-matter which has no connection with real life does not please his taste, and that to give it subtly artistic expression, no matter how attractive, is to aggravate a fault, not to cure it. The combination is degenerate and worthy of disgust. His own concern is with living and experience. Subtly smooth styles such as he rejects would be unnecessary and inappropriately matched to this content, and his own writing does not employ them.²⁹ He looks for inspiration to predecessors who were members of, or were associated with, the tradition of satiric criticism (Sat. 1. 114-25, Horace Sat.1.4.1ff.), and whose style and manners had different, rougher qualities.

Satire 5. 1-29 views with more than a hint of mockery and distrust the subjects and the exalted style of epic and tragic poetry. Thus Persius, while insisting that the genre satura and the matter and style associated with it are worthy of his choice, rejects a good proportion of contemporary poetry. On the other hand we have seen that his way of writing a traditionally personal, critical and colloquial³⁰ genre is very much his own; and in the early verses of Satire 5 he advances the claim that a straightforward use of an exalted style of the type associated with tragedy and epic is appropriate when serious and worthwhile things are the subject of composition, such as his debt to the guidance of Cornutus.³¹

A note must be added concerning the relationship of Persius' satires to the writing of his famous predecessor in the satura-tradition, Horace.

In Latin verse allusion to eminent predecessors is a very common practice. Even so Persius still stands out for the frequency with which he alludes to Horace's works, the lyric as well as the satiric poems. The examples quoted in footnotes to the translation are only a tiny proportion of the cases which exist.³² One necessary condition for the perfect English translation is that it should contain a similar number of allusions to the work of an English poet. A curious feature of the relationship, however, is that the light, tactful, ironic and sceptical Horatian manner, so well described by Persius at Sat. 1.116-18, is something like the opposite of the fervent and committed Stoic preaching of Persius in which all the allusions to Horace lie embedded. There would appear to be room for discussion of the nature, purposes and effects of this further example of juxtaposition in Persius.

Notes

1. On this, his personal name (praenomen), see M. Coffey, Roman Satire, London, 1976, p. 235, n. 9.

2. A text of the ancient Life, from which most biographical details about Persius are taken or deduced, is translated below, Appx. E, with some notes. Other pieces of ancient evidence are printed by Bo, p. XXIV. See also S-H II, pp. 477-9, VE pp. 1ff.

3. See S. F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome (London, 1977), Index s.v. ‘Philosophy: study of’.

4. See VE, pp. 47-102, Pohlenz, vol. I, pp. 281, 282.

5. Cf. Bonner, Education, pp. 87f., B. H. Warmington, Nero, Reality and Legend (London, 1969), pp. 26f.

6. Hor., S.2.7.86ff., C.3.3.7f., based on the LCL translators.

7. Translations (with text):

   Seneca, ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, tr. R. M. Gummere, 3 vols., London and N.Y., 1917-25 (LCL).

   Epictetus, The Discourses, tr. W. A. Oldfather, 2 vols., London and N.Y., 1926-8 (LCL).

   Musonius Rufus, the Roman Socrates, by Cora E. Lutz (repr. from YCS vol. 10, 1947, available from University Microfilms, Ann Arbor, Michigan).

   On the very large subject of Stoicism there are numerous studies, most notably that of M. Pohlenz, Die Stoa, 2 vols., Göttingen, 1948-9 (3rd ed. 1964). The student and general reader may find of service: E. Zeller, The Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics, tr. O. J. Reichel³ (London, 1892), A History of Eclecticism, tr. S. F. Alleyne (London, 1883); R. D. Hicks, Stoic and Epicurean (London, 1911); Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (London, 1946), ch. XXVIII; A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy (London, 1974); F. H. Sandbach, The Stoics (London, 1975). On Stoicism in Roman Society see S. Dill, Roman Society from Nero to Marcus Aurelius (London, 1925), Book III; on Stoicism in Persius, J. M. K. Martin, GR 8. 1939. 172-82.

8. Tac. Ann. 14. 12. 1-2.

9. Tac. Ann. 14. 57.5-59.4, and the later career of Thrasea, see H. Furneaux, ed., The Annals of Tacitus², Oxford, 1896-1907, Vol. II, index I, p. 508.

   On the Stoics and politics under the Empire see Pohlenz, Vol. I, pp. 277-90, D. R. Dudley, The World of Tacitus, London, 1968, pp. 58ff.: on the Stoics and Nero, Warmington, Nero, ch. 12, H. Furneaux, op. cit. Vol. II, pp. [80]-[85]; a different view, R. Syme, Tacitus, Oxford, 1958, pp. 552-62.

10. The history and nature of the genre and its writers can be studied in: Coffey, op. cit. or U. Knoche, Roman Satire (tr. by S. Ramage from Die römische Satire³, Göttingen, 1971), Bloomington, 1975.

    The evolution of the notion ‘satire’ and its connection with satura are discussed by G. L. Hendrickson, CP 22. 1927. 46ff.

11. For the relationship between satura and Greek moral philosophy, especially the long tradition, inherited by Rome from the Greek world, of popular moralising in various forms of sermon (or ‘diatribe’), see indexes to Coffey, Knoche, s.v. diatribe, E. G. Schmidt Diatribe u. Satire, WZUR 15. 1966. 507-15. On Lucilius see Coffey, pp. 52, 57f., Knoche, p. 50, G. C. Fiske Lucilius and Horace, Madison, 1920, pp. 180ff., 230-8, 380ff., 393f., Palmer (quoting Porphyrion) on Hor. S. 2.3.41; on Horace, N. Rudd, The Satires of Horace, Cambr., 1966, chs I, VI. The title Menippean Satires given to a work of Varro (first cent. B.C., see Coffey ch. 8, Knoche ch. V) perhaps implies that some connection between satura and popular moralising could be looked for in any case. It certainly links that work with one particular writer of the diatribe-tradition. Horace (Epl. 2.2.60) uses the name of the sermon-writer Bion in a compendious expression referring to satura; see also Knoche p. 82. On Persius see VE pp. 119-70, 315-63, C. S. Dessen, Iunctura Callidus Acri: A Study of Persius' Satires, Urbana, 1968, Index s.v. Sokratikoi logoi.

12. Polemical tone is well established in the saturae of Varro, who comments firmly, even strongly, upon contemporary society and sometimes upon politics, cf. Coffey pp. 159f., Knoche pp. 59-62. Horace at S. 1.4.1ff. and Epl. 2.2.60 alludes to satura as a hostile genre, as perhaps does Trebonius in Cicero ad Fam. 12.16.3. See further Coffey pp. 61f., 63f., Knoche p. 71.

13. Especially S. 1.1.120f., 1.4.14-16. See also 2.7.45, 1.3.139.

14. See Coffey pp. 98f.

15. It is possible that the emperor and his circle would have felt themselves touched by Persius's mockery in poem 1, although there is no firm evidence that they were referred to specifically. See N. Rudd, The Satires of Horace and Persius, Harmondsworth, 1973, pp. 16f, Warmington, Nero, p. 154, also Appendix A (i) p. 97.

    Poem 1 names few individuals and none are persons of influence (cf. Coffey p. 110). In poems 2 and 6 there is passing mention of persons, Cotta Messalinus and Caligula, whose time of influence lies in the past. This is a practice found in Juvenal and in a fragment of Turnus, another satura-writer of imperial date. United with the generalised but pointed type of criticism offered by poem 1, this practice would produce the kind of writing we should expect from an author who desired to write topical satire but was restrained by prudence. Such a manner of writing is, however, untypical of Persius's moral poetry.

16. ‘Constantly with’ Cornutus; admiration for Claudius Agathinus and Petronius Aristocrates; bequests to Cornutus.

17. He is sufficiently aware of the issues in the affair of Caligula's “triumph”, Sat. 6.43ff., n.17 ad loc.

18. Compare the attitude he expresses at Sat. 5.30-5.

19. Cf. title-notes to Satt. 2, 4, 5, 6, and Sat. 3 n. 19, 4 n. 4, 5 nn. 21, 23, 26, 42.

20. With S-H II, pp. 480f., Knoche p. 132ff., contrast Quint. 10.1.94, Mart. 4.29.7f., E. W. Gosse, The Life and Letters of John Donne (London, 1899), Vol. I, pp. 29-35, R. C. Bald, John Donne, A Life (Oxford, 1970), pp. 283f. See too J. P. Sullivan, Ramus 1. 1972. 48-51.

21. J. P. Sullivan, art. cit., esp. pp. 58-61, H. Bardon, Latomus, 34. 1975. 319-35, 675-98.

22. The opinion of E. Marmorale, cited by H. Beikircher, Kommentar zur VI. Satire des A. Persius Flaccus, Wien, 1969, pp. 14f.; note a similar comment upon the lyric poems of Horace, H. P. Syndikus, Die Lyrik des Horaz, Darmstadt, 1972, Vol. I, p. 15. H. Bardon, artt. citt., distinguishes between those who believe that there is a connected strand of thought to which the images contribute in a systematic way and those for whom the arrangement of the images is less deliberate, although they still contribute to a composite effect. In practice Beikircher belongs to the former group, and so do I.

23. Instances: ingenious and significant combinations, ‘(my spirit) strove to yield’, 5.39, or repetitions, 1.27; violent metaphor, ‘frypan of language’, 1.80; metaphors mixed, revived ‘from dead’, or extended. Sometimes a seemingly concrete composite picture proceeds from the neatness and assurance with which this is done, and the result may be disturbing: ‘… floats emasculated at their lips … grow where it's moist’, 1.104f. with n. 33, Bardon art. cit. p. 679. Metaphors may be given interesting or paradoxical connections with the idea for which they stand, cf. 3.82, ‘… pouting a lip (on which) to weigh … words’. Cf. W. Kugler, Des Persius Wille zu sprachlicher Gestaltung in seiner Wirkung auf Ausdruck und Komposition, Würzburg, 1940, pp. 4-54. At pp. 78f. Kugler gives a careful study of the complexities of the argument at Sat. 6. 14ff. Ideas and speech-registers are briskly juxtaposed at 2.9f., ‘Grant, I pray, that … might snuff it’, o si / ebulliat. Persius's dialogue contains much swift and curt exchange and causes difficulties of interpretation, as a number of the footnotes and appendices to the translation witness, cf. Coffey p. 101. He has a tendency to begin dialogue without warning and, where he mentions a speaker, to do so only after he has spoken (e.g. 2.8, 3.5, 6.57). For comment on an extended passage see Rudd, pp. 18f., Anderson loc. cit. in n. 29 below. It seems likely that ‘pointed linkage’ at 5.14 is a description of some or all of these features.

24. Cf. Beikircher, p. 13: “(Persius) wishes to rob the reader of the feeling of security …”.

    One aspect of this situation is that the Satires have no damaging likeness to stereotypes of the sermon, which will have existed in abundance then as now. No bored, indifferent or mocking response of the type which easily greets such stereotypes (cf. 3.77ff.) is possible.

25. On Persius's intolerance of the values of society see W. S. Anderson, WZUR 15. 1966. 409-16, esp. n. 9. Cf. passages adduced by E. G. Schmidt, ibid. pp. 511-13, Hor. C. 3. 2. 20, Orelli-Baiter ad loc., Sen. Helv. 5.6.1, Cons. Sap. 13.1-3. I think Anderson somewhat mistakes the poet's own stance, cf. Sat. 5. 21-40, but esp. 115 ‘our mould’: also Seneca on Progress, A. L. Motto, Guide to the Thought of L. Annaeus Seneca, Amsterdam, 1970 pp. 174f.

26. See above, n. 11. Cf. some of the sayings of Bion, Diog. Laert. 4.46ff. and the accounts of Varro's ‘Satires in the manner of Menippus’ (and not least their titles) in Coffey and Knoche. Abruptness in the management of dialogue is a prominent feature of Epictetus's manner.

27. Sat. 3.44ff. See S. F. Bonner, Roman Declamation in the late Republic and early Empire (Liverpool, 1949), W. C. Summers, ed., Select Letters of Seneca (London, 1932), Introduction A, B.I, III, esp. pp. xxxviiis., lxxviii-lxxx, xciv. Separation into two totally distinct sources of influence is probably unrealistic: practitioners in the two fields of activity, which had co-existed for centuries, drew freely upon each other's inventions both of style and matter, and upon a stock of literary techniques which resulted from them.

28. Bonner, Declamation, pp. 67-70, 165-7, Summers, pp. lxxxii-xc. Persius' dislike of Seneca is noted in the ancient Life, lines 24f. Bardon, art. cit. pp. 333f. calls attention to phrases in Seneca, Ep. 114. 10-15 which, if not directly critical of Persius, certainly represent a line of criticism which could be (and has been) advanced against him.

29. Cf. above, with nn. 21-4, Appendices A(i), A(ii), p. 107 on Sat. 1. Further see W. S. Anderson, WZUR 15. 1966. 414f.

30. Colloquial idiom was both a natural and a traditional one for satura-writers to use. See Coffey's Index s.v. colloquial language, Knoche pp. 51f., 84f., 132. The elements of Persius's diction, too, are predominantly colloquial (cf. 5.10ff.), although his method of using them differs from the easy and naturalistic one of his predecessors. He would probably have characterised the difference as a tendency to “something concentrated”, 1.125. See Coffey p. 115f. and the studies of V. d'Agostino RIGI 12. 1928. (3/4). 11-32, 13. 1929. (1/2). 105-29, (3/4). 21-39, 14. 1930. (1/2). 21-40, (3/4). 75-96 and G. Faranda RIL 88. 1955. 512-38.

31. Sat. 3. 35-43 is another case in point. Cf. also Appx. A(ii) on Sat. 1, p. 107f.

32. Modern studies of Persius's Horatian allusions have been made by D. Henss, Studien zur Imitationstechnik des Persius (Diss., Marburg, 1951), Die Imitationstechnik des Persius, Philol. 99. 1955. 277-94, and by N. Rudd, Lines of Enquiry (Cambridge, 1976), ch. 3.

Abbreviations

Abbreviations of ancient authors' names and works are listed only where they cannot reasonably be guessed with such help as necessary from lists of abbreviations or of authors in, for example, The Oxford Latin Dictionary.

Editions of Latin authors may generally be traced in the Supplementary Bibliographies appended by A. M. Duff to J. W. Duff, A Literary History of Rome (2 vols.), London, 1960 and 1964; or in OCD².

Publication-details of periodicals are usually those listed as current in L'Année Philologique (see p.124) 46.1975, pp. XIII ss.; those of earlier issues may sometimes be different.)

Bo: D. Bo (ed.) A. Persi Flacci Saturarum Liber, Paravia, 1969.

Bonner, Education: S. F. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome, London, 1977.

Coffey: M. Coffey, Roman Satire, London, 1976.

CP: Classical Philology, Chicago, Univ. of Chicago Press.

Dessen: Cynthia S. Dessen, Iunctura Callidus Acri: A Study of Persius' Satires, Illinois Studd. in Lang. and Lit. 59, Urbana, 1968.

GR: Greece and Rome, Oxford, Clarendon Press.

Knoche: U. Knoche, Roman Satire (Die römische Satire, 3rd German edition, Gottingen, 1971) tr. S. Ramage, Bloomington, 1975.

Kugler: W. Kugler, Des Persius Wille zu sprachlicher Gestaltung in seiner Wirkung auf Ausdruck und Komposition, Würzburg, 1940.

LCL: Loeb Classical Library.

Pohlenz: M. Pohlenz, Die Stoa: Geschichte einer geistigen Bewegung (2 vols.), Göttingen, 1948-9, 3rd edn., 1964.

RIGI: Rivista Indo-Greca-Italica di filologia, lingua, antichità, Naples.

RIL: Rendiconti dell' Istituto Lombardo, Classe di Lettere, Scienze morali e storiche, Milan.

Rudd: N. Rudd (tr.), The Satires of Horace and Persius (Penguin Classics), Harmondsworth, 1973.

S-H: M. Schanz (extensively revised by C. Hosius, G. Krüger) Geschichte der römischen Literatur (4 vols.), München, 1914-35.

Summers: W. C. Summers, ed., Select Letters of Seneca, London, 1932.

VE: F. Villeneuve, Essai sur Perse, Paris, 1918.

Warmington, Nero: B. H. Warmington, Nero, Reality and Legend, London, 1969.

WZUR: Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Universität Rostock (Jahrgang 15, 1966, Heft 4/5 contains the Papers read at an international conference on the theme “Römische Satire u. römische Gesellschaft”, held in May, 1965. Summaries in German, Russian, English and French are added.)

YCS: Yale Classical Studies, New Haven, Yale Univ. Press.