SOURCE: Nisbet, R. G. M. “Persius.” In Critical Essays on Roman Literature, edited by J. P. Sullivan, pp. 39-71. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963.

[In the following essay, Nisbet provides an overview of Persius's writings.]

Aules Persius died nineteen hundred years ago, on 24 November, a.d. 62: birthplace Volterra (Tuscany), rank equestrian, cause of death ‘stomachi vitium’, age 27. He left behind him six satires,¹ less than 700 lines in all, which were published by his friends and won immediate acclaim. Lucan testified that they were true poems, and whatever his faults, Lucan was a true poet. A less gifted but longer-lived contemporary, Quintilian, added his commendation many years later: multum et verae gloriae quamvis uno libro Persius meruit (10.1.94).² Though one has no great confidence in Quintilian's literary judgements (he preferred Tibullus to Propertius), it is worth knowing that at least in the ancient world Persius appealed to professorial taste. Persius's book was praised by Martial and imitated by Juvenal, and it was thought important and difficult enough to be dignified with a commentary. The grammarians referred to him freely, even Charisius and Diomedes, who did not quote Juvenal; evidently Persius was established in the educational curriculum sooner than his great successor. The Christian fathers copied him with gusto, and St. Jerome found a peculiar fascination in his forceful and contorted epigrams.

Persius's fame survived the collapse of civilization, and no Latin poet except Virgil can produce a more distinguished procession of witnesses to merit.³ He was read and remembered by Cassiodorus, Isidore, Bede, and Heiric of Auxerre. His popularity between 900 and 1200 is attested by the entries in monastery catalogues and by the number of extant manuscripts: while authors like Catullus and Lucretius have come down by a single line, the pattern of Persius's tradition is so confused that it cannot be reconstructed in detail. In medieval England he is quoted by William of Malmesbury, John of Salisbury, Walter Map, Roger Bacon; in renaissance Italy by Petrarch, Boccaccio, Laurentius Valla, Politian. In the sixteenth century he is imitated by Skelton, Wyatt, and Joseph Hall;⁴ the hispid character of early English satire is partly due to a false assessment of his qualities. ‘Lay her i' the earth,’ says Laertes of Ophelia, ‘and from her fair and unpolluted flesh let violets spring.’ Though he did not know it, Shakespeare may have been influenced by Persius's sneer at the pretentious litterateur (1.39 f)

nunc non e tumulo fortunataque favilla
nascentur violae?

Now from his tomb and favoured ash will violets not be born?

At the beginning of the seventeenth century Persius was edited by the great Casaubon, who gave him first place among the satirists. He was imitated by Boileau, who sums him up in a judicious couplet:

Perse en ses vers obscurs, mais serrés et pressans,
Affecta d'enfermer moins de mots que de sens.

Dryden thought him worth comparing with Horace and Juvenal, and though his translation is for once unsuccessful, it at least confirms his interest and approval. In the eighteenth century Persius's influence diminished, but Gifford's Baviad is a close imitation of the first satire. The nineteenth century was on the whole unenthusiastic, though Renan made a curious exception. More recently Villeneuve⁵ and Marmorale have tried to defend Persius; but their studies are so diffuse, and in the latter case so undiscriminating, that they have not received much attention. Persius is commended for his austere ideals in an impure age, and for his devotion to his mother, sister, and aunt. Candidates for university prizes read him, and some enjoy him. But relatively few scholars regard him as a poet, or think it possible that Lucan might have known what he was talking about.

Persius's satires are preceded (or in some manuscripts followed) by an epigram of fourteen lines, written not in hexameters like the rest, but in ‘limping iambics’. They are of little importance in themselves, but they contain some typical satiric phrases, and they can be used to illustrate the vogue for our author in Tudor and Jacobean England. Persius begins by proclaiming that he never soused his lips in the horse's fountain, nec fonte labra prolui caballino: he means Hippocrene, but caballus (the ancestor of cheval) is a vulgar word. He never had a dream on two-headed Parnassus: this is a hit at Ennius, who claimed to have been visited by Homer during his sleep. Henry Fitzgeffrey catches the spirit of the thing at the end of his first satire (1617):

                                                                                It was nere my hap
On high Pernassus Top to take a nap.

Persius leaves the daughters of Helicon and pallid Pirene to those whose busts are licked by the climbing ivy (illis remitto quorum imagines lambunt / hederae sequaces). Joseph Hall in the first satire of his Virgidemiarum (1598) attempts an indifferent paraphrase:

Trumpet, and reeds, and socks, and buskins fine
I them bequeath whose statues wandering twine
Of Yvy, mixt with Bayes, circlen around
Their living Temples likewise Laurell-bound.

Persius next asks himself his reason for writing:

quis expedivit psittaco suum chaere
picamque docuit nostra verba conari?

Who made the parrot so free with his ‘hullo’, and taught the magpie to venture human speech?

Skelton alludes to this passage in his enigmatic Speke Parrot:

In Greeke tong Parrot can bothe speke and say,
As Percyus, that poet, doth report of me,
Quis expedivit psittaco suum chaire?

Persius answers his own question with a joke: it is the stomach which persuades parrots to talk and poets to write. These lines illustrate in a minor way two of our author's weaknesses. First, they are derived from books rather than experience: it was all very well for Horace to suggest that poverty had made him write, but Persius was a rich man. Secondly, the end of the prologue does not make a unity with the beginning. Some scholars have supposed that the poet's executors joined two fragments which they found in his papers, but such assumptions are unnecessary. Persius was a slow writer, the ancient life tells us, and he had little gift for construction: his poems often leave us with the feeling that he has broken off for lunch in the middle.

The first satire also deals with the poet's reasons for writing, but here at least some serious comments are offered.

o curas hominum! o quantum est in rebus inane!
‘quis leget haec?’ min tu istud ais? nemo hercule. ‘nemo?’
vel duo vel nemo. ‘turpe et miserabile.’ quare?
ne mihi Polydamas et Troiades Labeonem
praetulerint? nugae. …

(1.1 ff)

The toils of men! The emptiness of life! ‘Who's going to read that?’ Are you talking to me? Nobody, of course. ‘Nobody?’ Well, two at the most. ‘That's a poor show.’ Why? Because Polydamas and the Trojan Women may prefer Labeo to me? Bosh.

The opening line is solemn and sententious, and there is no reason to doubt the scholiast's information that it comes from Lucilius, the father of Roman satire. There follows a snatch of conversation: the economy and verve of such passages are not sufficiently appreciated. The poet's friend puzzles modern readers, and Persius is blamed for not making him come to life. But that is to misunderstand the style. Such conversations are not really dramatic (Livy was wrong to connect satire with village plays); one should rather compare the orators with their ‘Someone may say’. The trick was also used in Greek diatribe (popular philosophical discussion), which had great influence on satire. It is not always clear, nor does it matter, whether Persius is talking to himself or to somebody else. He is simply exploiting a lively rhetorical device to show the fluctuations of his thought.

The complicated and compressed allusions are also characteristic of our author. Polydamas in the Iliad is a symbol of respectability, who will reproach Hector if he falters; the Trojan Women are said by Homer to be equally censorious. Attius Labeo was a bad poet whose name has passed into English satire; Persius mentions him here, in the same context as Polydamas, because he translated the Iliad. This is an ingenious touch, but it does not compensate for the lack of precise criticism of Labeo's verse. Persius's satire would have more edge if he had abused distinct individuals for specific faults.

Polydamas can think what he likes, but Persius is indifferent to standards outside himself. This is doctrinaire Stoicism: in real life one supposes that he consulted his friends even more than Horace did. But he claims to have his secret reasons:

nam Romae quis non—a, si fas dicere—sed fas
tum cum ad canitiem et nostrum istud vivere triste
aspexi ac nucibus facimus quaecumque relictis,
cum sapimus patruos. tunc tunc—ignoscite (nolo,
quid faciam?) sed sum petulanti splene—cachinno.

(1.8 ff)

For at Rome who doesn't—ah, were it but permissible to speak—but it is permissible when I look at our venerable hairs and solemn lives, and then at all we have been doing since we gave up marbles, now that we have put on the airs of uncles. When I do that—I'm sorry, I don't mean to, I can't help it, it's just that I've a cheeky sense of humour—I cackle.

The lively parenthesis is typical of Persius: like Browning, he tries to reproduce the confused movement of thought and conversation, and again like Browning, he never lets the result sound quite like human speech. Editors who do not understand the style try to make cachinno a noun, meaning ‘a jester’; but Housman, in his outstanding article⁶ on Persius, exposed the futility of this interpretation. After his feverish apologies the poet finally produces a triumphant cackle, but he fails to reveal his deadly secret: that must wait till the end of the satire.

Persius now describes a recitation by a popular poet: such ceremonies had also annoyed Horace, but Persius has a sharper eye (though sometimes less feeling for atmosphere). The celebrity sits spruce in his high chair wearing a clean toga and his best ring; he has gargled his supple larynx with a liquid intonation (liquido cum plasmate guttur / mobile conlueris), and he ogles his audience disgustingly. William Gifford imitates the passage to describe Della Crusca reciting at Mrs. Piozzi's:

So forth he steps, and with complacent air
Bows round the circle, and assumes the chair:
With lemonade he gargles first his throat,
Then sweetly preludes to the liquid note. …
A wild delirium round th' assembly flies;
Unusual lustre shoots from Emma's eyes;
Luxurious Arno drivels as he stands;
And Anna frisks, and Laura claps her hands.

(Baviad, 49 ff)

The lines are neat, but they have lost the energy of Persius's style: plasma is not lemonade or any other drink, but a rhetorical term for the modulation of the voice. Gifford never uses words in an original way: Persius does so repeatedly.

With a characteristic change of direction Persius allows the poetaster to put in a defence. It is one that is more common in the modern than the ancient world, the assertion that the creative impulse cannot be denied.

‘quo didicisse, nisi hoc fermentum et quae semel intus
innata est rupto iecore exierit caprificus?’

(1.24 f)

‘What's the use of study unless this frothing yeast and the sterile fig-tree, which has once taken root within, bursts the liver and shoots out?’

Other writers refer to the capacity of the growing fig-tree to burst the stones where it is lodged, but it took Persius to use the image with such bizarre ingenuity. Commentators say that ‘the liver’ means little more than the breast; they should rather compare Juvenal's words to the striving barrister: rumpe miser tensum iecur, ‘strain your liver till it bursts’. Only Persius among Latin poets could have contrived so magnificent a mixture of metaphors. Such conflations are not regarded as an offence in Pindar or Shakespeare, so why in Latin?

But though Persius describes the urge to write so convincingly, he meets it with the stock, inadequate answer: ‘Why publish?’ He takes a lofty, unrealistic approach even to the desire for post-humous fame. Yet with his usual indecision he allows his opponent another word:

                                                  ‘rides’ ait ‘et nimis uncis
naribus indulges. an erit qui velle recuset
os populi meruisse et cedro digna locutus
linquere nec scombros metuentia carmina nec tus?’

(1.40 ff)

‘You're laughing at me,’ he says, ‘and curling your nose too freely. Everybody must want to have earned a place on the nation's lips, and when he has said things worthy of moth-balls to leave poems that fear neither mackerel nor frankincense.’

In the first sentence Persius seems to combine four Horatian phrases, rides ait, naso adunco, acutis naribus, naribus uti. The third line parodies Virgil's ‘Phoebo digna locuti’. Again, Catullus had suggested that bad poems could be used for frying mackerel in, while Horace thought they would make pokes for incense; Persius alludes to both with his usual economy.⁷ H. E. Butler in his uncomprehending sketch⁸ says that Horace became a veritable obsession with Persius, and that since he cannot keep Horace out he strives to disguise him. But Persius would have been very hurt if any of his cleverness had been missed.

Persius now admits that he is not indifferent to popularity (he is not made of horn), but he does deny that the ultimate test of excellence lies in the gushing exclamations of an emotional Italian audience. The prosperous patron of letters invites his struggling satellites to dinner, and then asks for candid appraisal of his work. Persius gives it to him: nugaris cum tibi, calve / pinguis aqualiculus propenso sesquipede extet, ‘Your verses are light-weight, bald-head, though your fat pot-belly dangles out a foot and a half’. Then with magnificent grotesqueness he meditates on the fortune of two-headed Janus, who can never be criticized behind his back:

o Iane, a tergo quem nulla ciconia pinsit
nec manus auriculas imitari mobilis albas
nec linguae quantum sitiat canis Apula tantae.

(1.58 ff)

O Janus, whom no stork pecks behind, nor a hand deft at mimicking white ears, nor tongues big enough for an Apulian bitch's thirst.

These lines are sometimes criticized for obscurity; yet an ancient reader would have known that it was a rude gesture to imitate a stork's bill, or a donkey's ears, or to stick out one's tongue. tantae is undeniably feeble, and Barth's tentae (‘stretched’) deserves consideration;⁹ it is not clear whether he intended it as a genitive singular or nominative plural. The emendation gains a little support from St. Jerome's characteristic adaptation (Epist. 125.18): ‘si subito respexeris aut ciconiarum deprehendas post te colla curvari aut manu auriculas agitari asini aut aestuantem canis protendi linguam’.

The pretensions of the literary establishment are intolerable, but the poetry-loving public is just as bad. It thinks only of the smoothness of verses, and supposes that the technique of a modern poet is equal to anything. Fathers warn their sons to avoid old-fashioned tastes:

‘est nunc Brisaei quem venosus liber Acci,
sunt quos Pacuviusque et verrucosa moretur
Antiopa aerumnis cor luctificabile fulta?’

(1.76 ff)

‘Is there anybody now who could pore over the shrivelled tome of Dionysian Accius, or Pacuvius and his warty Antiopa, whose dolorific heart resteth on tribulation?’

These lines form a question, and they give a point of view of which Persius disapproves. The description of Antiopa is perhaps the best parody in Latin. Most ancient parodies belong to the facile sort where an incongruous phrase is interpolated in a familiar quotation, but here Persius caricatures the oddity of the whole archaic style. Even if he has in mind a particular passage of Pacuvius, it would be a brilliant tour de force to reproduce it in a different metre.

Other parodies follow, this time of the moderns:

‘cludere sic versum didicit “Berecyntius Attis”
et “qui caeruleum dirimebat Nerea delphin,”
sic “costam longo subduximus Appennino”.’

(1.93 ff)

‘Thus “Berecyntian Attis” has learned to round off a line, and “the dolphin that clave sea-green Nereus”, or “we have filched a rib from the long Apennines”.’

Persius seems here to be scoffing at the Alexandrian tastes which survived in the early empire (witness the pseudo-Virgilian Ciris); the Greek mythology is too precious, the word-order of the second line is reminiscent of neoteric ‘epyllion’, and the spondaic ending Appennino is affected. Yet the point of the criticism partly eludes us, perhaps because some specific imitation is now lost.

The next words are also difficult.

‘“Arma virum”: nonne hoc spumosum et cortice pingui ut ramale vetus vegrandi subere coctum?’

(1.96 f)

‘“Arms and the man”: isn't this puffy stuff made of bloated bark like a desiccated branch baked with overgrown cork?’

Here the interrupter finds fault with the Aeneid for being out-of-date; such criticism now seems strange, but Seneca recognized in Virgil some clumsy and archaizing verses.¹⁰spumosum suggests dried scum rather than watery froth; the reader should imagine not soap-suds but a dried-up sponge. Some commentators assign the words to Persius rather than to the ghost-voice; they explain arma virum as an oath, and think that the satirist is contrasting the virile Virgil with the flaccid modern style. But the smooth ‘Berecyntian Attis’ could hardly be compared with a dried-up branch, and the lines that follow suggest that the interrupter is speaking.

The next parody is much easier:

‘torva Mimalloneis inplerunt cornua bombis,
et raptum vitulo caput ablatura superbo
Bassaris et lyncem Maenas flexura corymbis
euhion ingeminat, reparabilis adsonat echo.’

(1.99 ff)

‘They filled their grim horns with Bacchanal booms, and the Bassarid, like to tear the head from a prancing calf, and the Maenad, ready to rein a lynx with ivy-clusters, cry “Euhoe Euhoe” while the responsive echo chimes in.’

The scholiast assigns these lines to Nero, but he greatly exaggerates both Persius's audacity and his sense of relevance. The parody would hit off the facile fluency of many Silver Age poets (note the future participles, and the dactyls of the last line). Lucretius had lamented the poverty of his ancestral tongue, but now any trivial person could turn out slick Swinburnian hexameters without thinking what he was saying:

                                                                                          summa delumbe saliva
hoc natat in labris et in udo est Maenas et Attis
nec pluteum caedit nec demorsos sapit ungues.

(1.104 ff)

Dryden has the right idea:

Maenas and Atys in the Mouth were bred;
And never hatch'd within the lab'ring Head.
No Blood, from bitten Nails, those Poems drew:
But churn'd, like Spettle, from the Lips they flew.

‘That may be so,’ says the candid friend, ‘but it is unwise to grate on sensitive ears with the tingling truth: vide sis ne maiorum tibi forte / limina frigescant’, ‘take care for my sake that the doorsteps of the great don't freeze for you’. Here the satirist once more is imitating Horace (Sat. 2.1.60 maiorum ne quis amicus / frigore te feriat), and once again he has improved on his model: doorsteps can be cold literally as well as metaphorically. Persius meets the interrupter's point by a conventional appeal to the invective of Lucilius (Horace and Juvenal do the same, though none of the three was in a position to write invective himself). He suggests that even Horace had made some valid criticisms of his friends and society:

omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico
tangit et admissus circum praecordia ludit,
callidus excusso populum suspendere naso.

(1.116 ff)

Sly Flaccus touches every fault of his smiling friend, and gaining admittance plays round his heart-strings, with a knack for balancing the crowd on his well-blown nose.

The characterization is brilliant: vafer, for instance, pictures Horace as a clever, ingratiating slave. Yet though Persius is so ingenious with his words, he does nothing about imitating Horace in practice.

The satirist now digs himself a hole, and breathes into it the deadly secret that he has been carrying since the beginning of the poem:

hic tamen infodiam. vidi, vidi ipse, libelle:
auriculas asini quis non habet?

(1.120 f)

I'll bury it here. I saw I saw it, my book, with my own eyes: who hasn't got a donkey's ears?

The ancient biographer informs us that Persius originally wrote auriculas asini Mida rex habet (‘King Midas has a donkey's ears’), and that the change was made after his death to avoid offending Nero. The story might have some truth in it, for it is easier to bury a statement than a question. The reading quis non, to be sure, is supported by quis non in l. 8; but it is just possible that l. 8 was changed as well. Persius's intentions were innocent: if he wrote ‘Midas’ he meant the word to symbolize pretentious people in general. Yet literary critics should not say that the emperor has no clothes at a time when the reigning emperor writes poetry.

Persius claims to be maintaining the traditions not only of satire but also of Old Comedy. Horace had seen a link between Lucilius and Aristophanes, and though the direct connexion was very remote, it is true that both indulged in personal invective. Persius professes to keep up the convention of his genre, but he does not, in fact, attack contemporaries: even the discreet Horace is more topical. The lack of invective is not, however, important; venomous self-righteousness can easily become boring. It is more serious that Persius offers little of the social comment which is found so abundantly in the comic poets.

Persius's final claim is more sensible. He is writing for the discriminating reader who likes aliquid decoctius, ‘something boiled down’: his own density of expression could not be more succinctly described. He does not write for people who sneer at Greek sandals and say ‘One-eye’ to a one-eyed man (Juvenal would have done both these things). Such persons think that they matter just because they are magistrates at Arezzo with the right to smash short measures: Juvenal borrowed this passage (10.101), for Persius was not the only satirist to imitate his predecessors. People like that can read the law-reports¹¹ in the morning and see a revue after lunch, but Persius does not want them for his admirers. The satire ends appropriately with a declaration of seriousness.

The second satire is written in honour of Macrinus's birthday.

Hunc, Macrine, diem numera meliore lapillo
qui tibi labentis apponit(12) candidus annos.

(2.1 f)

Count this day, Macrinus, with a better pebble, the white day that credits to your account the gliding years.

The scholiast tells us that Macrinus belonged to the circle of Servilius Nonianus, and that he loved Persius like a son: this is not much to go on, and the poem says even less than this. Horace had used satire as a vehicle for the expression of friendship, and he liked to introduce small touches which suited a particular individual. Thus, in inviting Manlius Torquatus to supper, he offers him a wine from the battlefield of his most famous ancestor¹³ (Epist. 1.5); and he tells Aristius Fuscus, who was a schoolmaster, not to let him go incastigatum or unchastised (Epist. 1.10). One finds none of this urbane banter in Persius. We may be told that Cornutus is a philosopher and Bassus a poet, but they remain as lifeless as Juvenal's Umbricius and Calvinus. Persius was not old or confident enough to write about himself and his friends; perhaps, too, his friends were rather dull. This was a pity: the personal element had been the most significant feature of Roman satire and was much more important than the invective of which the satirists themselves talk so much.

The subject of the second satire is the right and wrong types of prayer. The theme was a commonplace in philosophy and declamation, and editors quote parallels from Plato and Seneca; but the most instructive analogue is Juvenal's tenth satire, the ‘Vanity of Human Wishes’. Juvenal wrote the more striking poem; his astonishing fertility of invention and his eye for the telling detail are nowhere seen to better advantage. By comparison Persius seems bald and perfunctory. Yet it should be remembered that in the second satire he may still have been feeling his way; the first is programmatic and unlikely to have been written first. In several ancient collections the second poem is demonstrably early (Virgil's Eclogues, Horace's Satires I and Odes I-III).

Macrinus is immediately forgotten and Persius turns to more serious matters. He begins with the iniquity of silent prayer.¹⁴ Men may voice noble aspirations when somebody is listening, but soon they are muttering unavowable ambitions under their tongue:

                                                                                                                        ‘o si
ebulliat patruus, praeclarum funus!’ et ‘o si
sub rastro crepet argenti mihi seria dextro
Hercule! pupillumve utinam, quem proximus heres
inpello, expungam; nam et est scabiosus et acri
bile tumet. Nerio iam tertia conditur uxor.’

(2.9 ff)

‘If only my uncle would pop off—a grand funeral’; and ‘may a crock of silver thud under my spade by the grace of Hercules’; or ‘if only I could chalk off my ward, who's doing me out of a legacy; he's got both scrofula and jaundice. Nerius is burying his third wife already’.

The string of commonplaces is paralleled in Horace and Petronius, but the idiom is original. The prayer for buried treasure is more conventional than convincing, but the thud of the pot is a vivid elaboration of Persius's own. The pensive aside on Nerius is deftly contrived: Persius should not be criticized here for abruptness, but complimented for observing the movement of thought.

To Persius such prayers are outrageous. If one avowed such ambitions to Staius he would say ‘Good God’: so why shouldn't God say ‘Good God’ himself? (at sese non clamet Iuppiter ipse?) Here Persius is being cynical, in the ancient sense of the term; that is to say, he is imitating the earnest irreverence of the followers of Diogenes. He continues in the same vein: ‘Do you think you are let off because in a thunderstorm the oaks are split sooner than you? Just because you aren't lying in the woods with a fence round you to mark the spot, that doesn't mean that Jupiter is going to let you pull his beard. Do you think you have bought God's ears by a bribe of greasy intestines?’ Roman satire did not have to be satirical in the modern sense, but it sometimes was; and Persius saw the possibilities of the style. In such derisive passages he is going farther than Horace and pointing the way to Juvenal.

There follows another conventional scene, the old woman's prayer for a baby's future fortune. Persius describes with cruel realism how she takes the child from his cot and smears her spittle over his brow. And then she prays:

‘hunc optet generum rex et regina, puellae
hunc rapiant, quidquid calcaverit hic rosa fiat.’
ast ego nutrici non mando vota. negato,
Iuppiter, haec illi, quamvis te albata rogarit.

(2.37 ff)

‘May a king and queen want him to marry their daughter; may girls scramble for him; wherever he treads may roses bloom.’ But I don't delegate my prayers to a nurse: refuse her, o Lord, although she ask thee in her Sunday best.

The contempt is Stoic and seems cold to modern taste. Yet Juvenal is much worse: after describing a mother's prayers for her daughter's beauty he hints that she might be safer with a hunchback. Persius is never cynical that way.

Persius next discusses prayers for health and long life, but he exhausts the subject in three lines (contrast Juvenal's fluent treatment). It is foolish, he says, to pray for strength when our rich pickles stand in God's way; Diogenes the Cynic had said the same thing (Diogenes Laertius 6.28). Then back again to wealth: why pray that your cattle may prosper while your calves' guts liquefy in the sacrificial flame?

et tamen hic extis et opimo vincere ferto
intendit: ‘iam crescit ager, iam crescit ovile,
iam dabitur, iam iam' donec deceptus et exspes
nequiquam fundo suspiret nummus in imo.

(2.48 ff)

But all the same he tries to win his wish by means of animals' entrails and rich sacrificial-cakes: ‘now my fields are growing, now my sheepfold, now I'll get my hands on it, now at any minute’, until disappointed and despairing at the bottom of the money-box the last coin sighs unavailingly.

suspiret again shows Persius's remarkable gift for using language in a new and exciting way.

Another cynical touch follows: men cover the gods' images with a film of gold because they imagine them as avaricious as themselves. This leads to one of the most eloquent passages in Persius:

o curvae in terris animae et caelestium inanis,
quid iuvat hoc, templis nostros immittere mores
et bona dis ex hac scelerata ducere pulpa?

(2.61 ff)

Souls stooped on the ground and void of the divine, what use is it to introduce our own morals into the churches, and infer the gods' good from this sinful flesh?

In the solemn language of law and religion Persius asks the sacred college for a ruling: dicite pontifices, in sancto quid facit aurum?, ‘what avails gold in consecrated ground?’ We should offer something that bleary Messalinus could not give from his big platter: purity of heart and nobility of mind. One naturally compares Juvenal's concluding prayer for ‘mens sana in corpore sano’, but though Juvenal is more memorable, Persius is more convincing, both here and throughout the satire. Juvenal delights to demonstrate that achievement of one's hopes may lead to disaster; Persius is genuinely concerned with leading a good life. To Juvenal, Demosthenes and Cicero would have fared better if they had never become great orators; Persius may have a professional veneer of cynicism, but he is never cheap.

The third satire begins with one of the most vivid pictures in Persius:

nempe haec adsidue. iam clarum mane fenestras
intrat et angustas extendit lumine rimas.
stertimus indomitum quod despumare Falernum
sufficiat, quinta dum linea tangitur umbra.
‘en quid agis? siccas insana canicula messes
iam dudum coquit et patula pecus omne sub ulmo est’
unus ait comitum.

(3.1 ff)

Always the same story. Already the bright morning is coming through the shutters and widening the thin chinks with light. We are snoring enough to take the froth off fiery Falernian while the line is touched by the fifth shadow [i.e. it's 11 o'clock]. ‘Here, what d'you think you're doing? The raving dogstar has long been baking the thirsty crops, and the whole herd is under the spreading elm.’ So speaks a friend.

The scene that follows is equally convincing, especially to those who have found themselves in the same predicament. The sluggard takes hold of pen and parchment (which is suitably described as two-coloured, as the hair has been removed from one side). But nothing goes right. First the ink is too thick: it was one of the hazards of composition in antiquity that the author had to mix his own. Yet when the stuff is diluted, the pen can only make watery blobs.

an tali studeam calamo? cui verba? quid istas
succinis ambages? tibi luditur. effluis amens,
contemnere.

(3.19 ff)

How can I work with a pen like that? Who d'you think you're fooling? Why the snivelling about the bush? It's your move. You're heedlessly dripping away, and you'll soon be written off.

These racy lines show Persius at his best: the combination of earnestness and liveliness is individual and typical. He continues with his lecture: ‘You're wasting your youth, the most impressionable time of your life. The man in the street may admire you because you belong to an equestrian Etruscan family, but I know what lies under your trappings. You are worse than Natta, for he has lost all sense of right and wrong, and has sunk so deep that he blows no bubbles on the surface (et alto / demersus summa rursus non bullit in unda).’

The drift is clear, but who are the dramatis personae? It used to be supposed that the sluggard was as shadowy as Natta, a mere dummy borrowed from diatribe and declamation. It was assumed that most of the opening scene was spoken by an anonymous friend of the anonymous sluggard. It is true that the first person plural stertimus (l. 3) does not usually mean ‘you are snoring’; yet it was pointed out that modern doctors sometimes say ‘How are we today?’ However, in 1913 Housman exploded the prevailing explanation, and it can no longer be taken for granted that the bedside plural is a legitimate Latin construction. He showed that the whole opening passage (except 5-6) is spoken not by the candid friend but by the sluggard himself. And as for this mysterious personage, Housman observed what ought to have been noticed before: an earnest young man who writes slowly and comes from a prosperous Etruscan family can only be Persius.

Housman's solution has been distrusted by editors, with the notable exception of Clausen, but it makes sense of the whole passage. The dialogue is conducted between the satirist's higher and lower selves; this suits the conventions of popular philosophy. It may be objected that the drunken stupor of l. 3 ill suits our virtuous author. But Persius does not say that he was drunk, only that his snores could have coped even with Falernian (the scholiast is right here; so is Dryden). Persius is certainly obscure, but not so obscure as some editors have made him.

Persius takes a serious view of his late start in the morning, and is led by it to some impressive moralizing.

magne pater divum, saevos punire tyrannos
haut alia ratione velis, cum dira libido
moverit ingenium ferventi tincta veneno:
virtutem videant intabescantque relicta.

(3.35 ff)

Sir Thomas Wyatt imitated this passage at the end of his second satire, and caught the gravity of his original.

None other pain pray I for theim to be
          But when the rage doeth led theim from the right
          That lowking backward, Vertue they may se
Evyn as she is, so goodly fayre and bright;
          And whilst they claspe their lustes in armes a crosse,
          Graunt theim, goode Lorde, as thou maist of thy myght,
          To frete inward for losing suche a losse.

But though Persius's words are fine, they come in rather abruptly. Hendrickson wished to transpose ll. 35-43 to follow 57;¹⁵ yet any disjointedness should probably be ascribed to the satirist rather than to his executors. It can be explained by his lack of fluency and overconscientious methods of composition, but perhaps that is not the whole story. Certainly it is remarkable that similar jerkiness is found elsewhere in Stoic diatribe: Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, as well as Persius, composed by the paragraph.

After this portentous interlude Persius resumes his lighter style with an unusually genial reminiscence from his schooldays. He tells us his embarrassment at having to learn up Cato's dying speech and then recite it in front of his perspiring father. So he smeared his eyes with olive oil, and by this simple stratagem persuaded his family that he needed a rest. It is surprising to find the impeccable Persius resorting to such devices, but he claims that his action was quite reasonable: when he was a child he knew no better. Backsliding is much more reprehensible now that he is a man; for now he has learned the lessons of ‘the portico daubed with trousered Medes’ (the facetious periphrasis for the Stoic school points the way to a stylistic mannerism of Juvenal's). Persius's argument shows Stoic unreasonableness at its worst, but one is grateful for the detail about his sweating father. There is only one snag, pointed out by Villeneuve:¹⁶ Persius's father died when he was six. It is not very likely that his stepfather is meant, especially as he, too, died a few years later. The most personal anecdote in Persius seems to be a piece of fiction.

Persius now shifts his ground slightly. So far he has been blaming people who waste their lives in spite of having studied philosophy; now he suggests that philosophy may be of some help. He thinks that it can give protection against spiritual ailments before their onset; the medical metaphor is characteristic of popular moralizing. There follows a string of Stoic aphorisms which can be paralleled in Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.

discite et, o miseri, causas cognoscite rerum:
quid sumus et quidnam victuri gignimur, …
                                                                                                    quem te deus esse
iussit et humana qua parte locatus es in re.

(3.66 f, 71 f)

Be instructed, miserable men, and learn the first cause of things: what we are, what sort of life we are sent into the world to lead, … what part God has ordered you to play and where you have been stationed in the commonwealth of human-kind.

After this impressive sermon Persius suddenly shifts his style: ‘You mustn't ignore philosophy just because your larder is full of groceries presented by clients in the country.’ The passage was imitated by Juvenal, but Juvenal never attempted so piquant a blend of diatribe and satire.

Next comes a digression in which a centurion makes unfriendly remarks on philosophy. Hendrickson acutely observes that the passage would be more appropriate at the end of the poem (cf. 1.127 ff, 5.189 ff); and it must be admitted that in spite of its cleverness this satire is very oddly arranged. The centurion claims to know what's what without outside assistance:

                                                                                                              non ego curo
esse quod Arcesilas aerumnosique Solones
obstipo capite et figentes lumine terram,
murmura cum secum et rabiosa silentia rodunt
atque exporrecto trutinantur verba labello.(17)

(3.78 ff)

I don't want to be like Arcesilas or some careworn Solon, with their stooped heads and eyes nailed to the ground, while they gnaw mumbles to themselves and rabid silences, and weigh their words on outstretched lips.

Like all Persius's characters the centurion talks like Persius, just as Juvenal's characters talk like Juvenal; neither attempted the subtle variations of style which we find in Horace. But though dramatically unconvincing the lines are stylistically brilliant. Conventional critics are dismayed: nobody can literally gnaw mumbles, or for that matter silences. Yet if one takes a step back the phrase as a whole is wonderfully alive and not in the least obscure.

Persius now describes a sick man who in defiance of his doctor takes a heavy dinner and a hot bath. Editors seem puzzled by the sequence of thought, but the passage is simply a parable, as Dryden in fact saw. We have already met medical metaphor; the abrupt introduction of the anecdote can be paralleled in Horace, and no doubt has its origin in diatribe. Yet the very vigour and detail of Persius's picture tempt the reader to forget the drift:

sed tremor inter vina subit calidumque trientem
excutit e manibus, dentes crepuere retecti,
uncta cadunt laxis tunc pulmentaria labris.
hinc tuba, candelae, tandemque beatulus alto
compositus lecto crassisque lutatus amomis
in portam rigidas calces extendit. at illum
hesterni capite induto subiere Quirites.

(3.100 ff)

As he drinks his wine a fit of shaking comes over him, and knocks the hot glass from his hands: his bared teeth chatter, and greasy savouries tumble from his loosened lips. The upshot is trumpet and candles, and in due course the late lamented is laid out on a tall bier, and smeared with greasy spices he sticks out his stiff heels to the door. The pallbearers wear caps on their heads, for yesterday they became Roman citizens.

The crude and cynical realism is worthy of Juvenal, who must have had this passage in mind when he described ‘death after peacock’ in his first satire. As well as being a poet in his own right, Persius deserves a little of the credit for Juvenal's success.

At last comes the application of the parable, which is sometimes misunderstood.

tange, miser, venas et pone in pectore dextram—
‘nil calet hic’—summosque pedes attinge manusque—
‘non frigent’: visa est si forte pecunia, sive
candida vicini subrisit molle puella,
cor tibi rite salit?

(3.107 ff)

Feel your pulse, miserable man, and place your right hand on your breast. ‘No temperature here.’ Touch the extremities of your hands and feet. ‘They aren't cold.’ But suppose some money comes into view or you get a soft smile from the pretty girl next door, is your heart-beat steady then?

Persius addresses the ‘patient’ (who is really his lower self), and tells him to feel his pulse. miser shows that the moral invalid is being spoken to; one cannot agree with those editors who think that the patient is being insolent to the doctor. The patient thinks that there is nothing the matter with him (just like the man in the parable who disregarded medical advice). As far as physical illness is concerned, no doubt he is right, but he may still be suffering from spiritual infirmities.

And so to the conclusion:

alges cum excussit membris timor albus aristas;
nunc face supposita fervescit sanguis et ira
scintillant oculi, dicisque facisque quod ipse
non sani esse hominis non sanus iuret Orestes.

(3.115 ff)

When white fear sticks up the bristles on your body, you are cold enough then all right. At other times your blood begins to boil as though you had been lit by a flame, your eyes spark with anger, and you say and do things which would seem indubitably mad even to mad Orestes.

This concluding passage is not well integrated with the previous section or with the rest of the satire; but the reader is perhaps reconciled by now to some structural incoherence. The mention of Orestes in the last line is meant to give a satiric colouring; he is one of the stock figures who came to Roman satire from Hellenistic philosophizing. As for the poem as a whole, one may feel that in spite of its lack of proportion (in more ways than one) it makes up for this by the vividness of its pictures and the virtuosity of its language. It might even be thought the best of the collection.

On the other hand, the fourth satire is both short and slight. It begins with a homily from the sage Socrates to the accomplished young politician Alcibiades.

‘rem populi tractas?’ (barbatum haec crede magistrum
dicere, sorbitio tollit quem dira cicutae)
‘quo fretus? dic hoc, magni pupille Pericli.
scilicet ingenium et rerum prudentia velox
ante pilos venit, dicenda tacendaque calles.
ergo ubi commota fervet plebecula bile,
fert animus calidae fecisse silentia turbae
maiestate manus. quid deinde loquere? “Quirites,
hoc puta non iustum est, illud male, rectius illud.”’

(4.1 ff)

‘So you're handling the nation's business? (imagine the bearded teacher is speaking who was killed off by a fell gulp of hemlock). By what entitlement? Answer me that, ward of mighty Pericles. Your quick wits and early-won expertise have outgrown your moustache; you have a flair for when to speak and when to give no comment. And so when public opinion is inflamed and tempers are seething, your spirit moves you to still the multitude's passions with a majestic gesture. So far, so good; but what have you got to say? “Gentlemen, course A is wrong, B is no use, a better idea is C.”’

This opening scene is admirable for its subtle blend of magniloquence and satire, and though it contains its quota of allusions it never becomes contorted or obscure. The first words refer to Plato's Symposium, where Alcibiades admits that he runs the country and neglects himself. sorbitio is not a grand word, and its conjunction with dira is a clever surprise. quo fretus? comes from the First Alcibiades, a dialogue rightly or wrongly attributed to Plato. The joke about the moustache is found in a Greek proverb and may have been a commonplace of diatribe. fert animus and fecisse silentia have a ring of high poetry, and maiestate manus is a fine coinage of Persius's own. Quirites gives a solemn touch, but the next line is phrased colloquially.

Socrates continues in more solemn vein. Alcibiades has studied philosophy, and ought to know something about right and wrong. Why then does he not stop waving his tail (caudam iactare) at the flattery of the mob? The only aim of this handsome young politician is to have a good time for himself.

‘exspecta, haut aliud respondeat haec anus. i nunc,
“Dinomaches ego sum” suffla, “sum candidus”. esto
dum ne deterius sapiat pannucia Baucis,
cum bene discincto cantaverit ocima vernae.’

(4.19 ff)

‘If you ask her this old hag would say just the same. Go on, spout away: “I'm an Alcmaeonid, and amn't I beautiful?” If you like, but you're no more a philosopher than a wizened peasant-woman peddling aphrodisiacs to dissolute slaves.’

That is to say, for purely selfish reasons the democratic politician sells harmful wares to unprincipled customers.

This opening passage is all very clever, but it lacks the greatest merit of satire: it has nothing to do with contemporary life. Plato had made some valid criticisms of Greek democracy, where an irresponsible assembly was led by inexpert politicians, but he was quite unrealistic about the actual virtues of a statesman. Persius makes matters worse by giving his sermon a local background: Alcibiades calls the people ‘Quirites’, the formal mode of addressing the Roman citizen-body. But the Roman assemblies had never had much direct influence over policy, and under the Empire none at all. Casaubon tried to save Persius's credit by making Alcibiades stand for Nero; in that case the smooth features of Seneca must be lurking behind Socrates's beard. But though some Stoics adopted a truculent attitude towards their rulers there is no reason to suppose that Persius would have tried anything so topical.

Persius goes on to complain that we are indifferent to our own faults: we only see the knapsack on the other man's back. Vettidius (an imaginary person) is so rich that a kite couldn't fly across his estates; so people think of him as a miser who grudges his slaves a good meal. Another man seems more relaxed, so nasty comments are made about his morals: here Persius allows himself some of the plain speaking traditional in Cynic diatribe and Roman satire. The drift of the argument is easily lost: Persius is not making a plea for tolerance in the Horatian manner, but simply observing that while we are indifferent to our own vices (the real point of the satire) we are ready enough to exaggerate our neighbour's faults. But the parenthetical portraits of the miser and the voluptuary are so detailed that the balance of the short satire is destroyed.

Finally Persius tries, not very successfully, to pull his poem together. If a man has hidden faults it is useless to disguise them or to protest that he enjoys the favour of the neighbourhood. If you really are a miser or a libertine there is no point in lending thirsty ears to the people's praises.

respue quod non es; tollat sua munera cerdo.
tecum habita: noris quam sit tibi curta supellex.

(4.51 f)

Spit out what you are not; the shopkeeper can take his presents back. Live in your own house, and you will find out the inadequacy of your furniture.

But in spite of good sentences like these the satire as a whole fails to live up to its promise.

The fifth satire is the longest of the collection, and was regarded by Casaubon and Dryden, among others, as the best. It is better organized than the rest, and its tone is persistently elevated, but it ought by now to be recognized that this is not the most important of Persius's qualities. The satire begins with a hit at poets who ask for a hundred voices and a hundred tongues. Such pretentious openings are for writers in the grand style who deal with subjects like Thyestes's cook-pot (Thyestes in the play ate his children). Jokes at the expense of epic and tragedy are common in Roman satire from Lucilius to Juvenal. The serious poetry of the Silver Age was particularly irrelevant to any actual human activity, and Persius's criticisms were amply justified.

Persius claims that his own satires have more contact with the real world.

verba togae sequeris iunctura callidus acri,
ore teres modico, pallentis radere mores
doctus et ingenuo culpam defigere ludo.

(5.14 ff)

You imitate ordinary language, but your pungent juxtapositions are ingenious and your style, though not inflated, is well-rounded; you show your art by the way you scrape at vicious morals and nail a fault with well-bred banter.

Some of this is a fair analysis of Persius's own practice. He used colloquialisms, but mixes them up with more serious elements. As a creator of clever iuncturae (the placing together of two words in an original and striking way) he has no rival except Horace. teres suggests that he took trouble over his composition, yet he avoids the os rotundum of the grand style. On the other hand, what follows is less realistic. Lucilius had abused his enemies' vices (though not out of high-mindedness), but Persius does not attempt the mildest of criticisms. Persius also refers to Horace's subtler methods; yet civilized teasing was as foreign to him as abuse. He has described the subject-matter of Satire, not of his own satires.

Persius now explains why he needs a hundred throats: he is going to express his devotion to his revered teacher, the Stoic Cornutus. Annaeus Cornutus may have been a freed man of the Seneca family, though we are told that Persius was not captivated by Seneca's own talents. He wrote on logic and rhetoric, and Virgil's poetry; his one surviving work, an allegorical interpretation of Greek mythology, suggests that he was a bore. Yet he is praised by Persius with all the unhealthy extravagance which ancient sages exacted from their disciples:

                                                                      teneros tu suscipis annos
Socratico, Cornute, sinu. tum fallere sollers
adposita intortos extendit regula mores
et premitur ratione animus vincique laborat
artificemque tuo ducit sub pollice voltum.

(5.36 ff)

You receive my young life, Cornutus, in your Socratic embrace. Then with deceptive skill the rule is applied to twisted habits and straightens them out; my mind is moulded by reason and struggles to be subdued, and takes on features under your artist's thumb.

Fine words, but they fail to please. When the master was regarded by the pupil with such uncritical veneration it is not surprising that the schools stagnated. Persius even offers Cornutus an eloquent elaboration of the astrological fancies with which Horace had cajoled Maecenas.

After his long introduction Persius now gets down to business. He starts with a well-worn theme, the diversity of human aims. One man is a merchant (this deserving class is treated unfairly by ancient thinkers), another a glutton, another a gambler; but when their joints grow old then they all realize that they have wasted their lives. A fine passage follows on the dangers of procrastination. The theme was agreeable to moralists: St. Augustine, for instance, points out that ‘cras, cras’ is what the crow says.¹⁸ Persius has nothing so striking as this touch, which would have appealed to him, but he handles the commonplace with distinction.

‘cras hoc fiet idem’. cras fiat. ‘quid? quasi magnum
nempe diem donas?’ sed cum lux altera venit,
iam cras hesternum consumpsimus; ecce aliud cras
egerit hos annos et semper paulum erit ultra.

(5.66 ff)

‘I can do it tomorrow just as well.’ All right, do it tomorrow. ‘What? D'you mean you regard a day as a big concession?’ But when another sun shines, already we have used up yesterday's tomorrow; see, another tomorrow ladles the years away, and always keeps a little ahead.

cras hoc fiet idem belong together, as K. F. Hermann saw (compare Ovid, Rem. Am. 104 dicimus assidue ‘cras quoque fiet idem’). The interpretation of cras fiat is due to Housman. No editor, so far as I know, has combined these two points; yet if either is rejected, the passage becomes very obscure.

Persius now comes to the main subject of his satire, the Stoic paradox that every fool is a slave and only the wise man free. Horace had handled the same theme in the seventh satire of his second book, but Persius's treatment has more of the true Stoic rigidity. He begins by describing the process of manumissio per vindictam and the symbolical twirling round by which a master could give a slave his liberty:

                              heu steriles veri, quibus una Quiritem
vertigo facit. hic Dama est non tresis agaso,(19)
vappa lippus et in tenui farragine mendax.
verterit hunc dominus, momento turbinis exit
Marcus Dama. papae! Marco spondente recusas
credere tu nummos? Marco sub iudice palles?
Marcus dixit, ita est. adsigna, Marce, tabellas.

(5.75 ff)

O men barren of the truth, for whom a single whirl can make a free citizen. Dama here is a twopenny stable-boy, a bleary tippler mendacious over a meagre feed. But let his master turn him round, in one short spin out he comes as Marcus Dama. I say! Marcus is surety, are you afraid to lend? Marcus is judge, do you turn white? Marcus has said so, it must be true. Could you witness my signature, Marcus?

After this promising start, Persius reverts to the mannerisms of his school. He imitates the close reasoning of the Stoic logicians.

‘an quisquam est alius liber, nisi ducere vitam
cui licet ut libuit? licet ut volo vivere, non sum
liberior Bruto?’ ‘mendose colligis’ inquit
Stoicus hic aurem mordaci lotus aceto,
‘hoc relicum accipio, “licet” illud et “ut volo” tolle.’

(5.83 ff)

‘Nobody is free unless he is able to lead his life as he pleases. I am able to live as I want. Therefore I am more free than Brutus.’ ‘Your conclusion is false,’ says the Stoic here, his ear rinsed with tingling vinegar. ‘I accept your major premiss, but you must retract your “able” and “as I want”.’

The metrical dialectic is pleasing, but not wholly original: Horace's butt, the Stoic Stertinius, had also talked in syllogisms (Satires 2.3.158 ff). Persius goes on to refer to the great jurist Masurius Sabinus; as Epictetus later did the same (4.3.12), one assumes that this is a Stoic commonplace. The dullness of the section is relieved by one magnificent line, dum veteres avias tibi de pulmone revello (‘while I uproot the grannies from your chest’); but the lecture that follows is too earnest. ‘Even if you lift a finger you do wrong’ is one of the silliest of the Stoic paradoxes. ‘The man at the mercy of his emotions is like a marionette pulled by strings’: this is another Stoic cliché, used several times by Marcus Aurelius, though also found in Plato and in Horace (Satires 2.7.82).

There follow speeches by Avarice and Luxury. Such debates between abstracts were traditional in diatribe,²⁰ but this time Persius handles the motif with liveliness and wit.

mane piger stertis. ‘surge’ inquit Avaritia, ‘eia,
surge’. negas. instat. ‘surge’ inquit. ‘non queo.’ ‘surge.’
‘et quid agam?’ ‘rogat! en saperdas advehe Ponto,
castoreum stuppas hebenum tus lubrica Coa;
tolle recens primus piper et sitiente camelo’.

(5.132 ff)

Morning, and you're in bed snoring. ‘Get up,’ says Avarice, ‘hi, get up.’ You won't. She keeps on. ‘Get up,’ she says. ‘Out of the question.’ ‘Get up.’ ‘What on earth for?’ ‘Listen to him. Import kippers from Russia, I tell you, along with castor, oakum, ebony, frankincense, oily Coan. Uplift this year's pepper before anybody else, and don't stop to give the camel a drink.’

It is interesting to compare Boileau's imitation:

Le sommeil sur ses yeux commence à s'épancher:
‘Debout’, dit l'Avarice, ‘il est temps de marcher.’
—‘Hé laissez-moi.’—‘Debout.’—‘Un moment.’—‘Tu répliques?’
—‘A peine le Soleil fait ouvrir les boutiques.’
—‘N'importe, lève-toi.’—Pourquoi faire, après tout?’
—‘Pour courir l'Océan de l'un à l'autre bout,
Chercher jusqu'au Japon la porcelaine et l'ambre,
Rapporter de Goa le poivre et le gingembre.’

(Sat. 8.69 ff)

Both passages are magnificent, but they are very different in style. Persius's dialogue is more vigorous, more amusing, and shorter: contrast mane piger stertis with the French version. His shopping-list has a ludicrous note which is absent from Boileau's resonant couplet. Boileau derives his theme from Persius, but in manner he is much closer to Horace's mature style.

Though Avarice makes her case so forcefully, Luxury sees some of the snags.

‘tu mare transilias? tibi torta cannabe fulto
cena sit in transtro Veientanumque rubellum
exhalet vapida laesum pice sessilis obba?’

(5.146 ff)

‘You skim the seas? You dine on a thwart, with a coiled hawser for your cushion, while a squat noggin stinks Veientan rosso, spoilt by the flat resin?’

The passage is meant to be grotesque, but it would be wrong to regard it as obscure. An ancient reader would not have needed to look up sessilis and obba, and unlike some modern commentators he would have known about resinated wine. Luxury's positive policy is expressed more conventionally, but the clichés are made effective by the concentration of the writing.

indulge genio, carpamus dulcia, nostrum est
quod vivis, cinis et manes et fabula fies,
vive memor leti, fugit hora, hoc quod loquor inde est.

(5.151 ff)

Be nice to yourself, let's gather rosebuds, one life is all you get, soon you'll be dust and a ghost and a memory, remember it won't last, time flies, these words of mine diminish it.

The debate between Luxury and Avarice is successful because it contains lively phrases as well as improving sentiments.

Next comes a literary reminiscence from the Eunuchus of Menander. The adaptation is skilfully made, but it suffers from comparison with a similar passage in Horace (Satires 2.3.262 ff). What follows is more original:

ius habet ille sui, palpo quem ducit hiantem
cretata Ambitio? vigila et cicer ingere large
rixanti populo, nostra ut Floralia possint
aprici meminisse senes.

(5.176 ff)

Is a man a free agent when he is petted and led along goggling by Lady Ambition, all clad in extra-white? Get up early and thrust beans lavishly on the squabbling populace, that our festival of Flora may be talked about by old men in the sunshine.

The noun palpo (from palpare ‘to stroke’) may be a happy coinage of Persius's own; Bücheler pointed out that it should be taken with Ambitio and not with ille. cretata is another vivid touch of satire: candidates at elections whitened their togas with chalk, which is why they were called candidati. The single word aprici summons up yet another picture. There follows an equally lively account of the superstitious man who observes Jewish or Egyptian rites; Persius anticipates Juvenal alike in the vigorous realism of his colouring and in his contempt for Oriental religions.

The satire ends with a rueful tailpiece, slightly self-mocking in the Horatian manner.

dixeris haec inter varicosos centuriones,
continuo crassum ridet Pulfenius ingens
et centum Graecos curto centusse licetur.

(5.189 ff)

Say this where the flat-footed sergeants can hear you, and at once hulking Pulfenius brays coarsely, and says a hundred Greeks aren't worth four and twopence.

Centurions get a bad press from the Roman satirists, no doubt deservedly. Horace has unhappy memories of his local school, which was dominated by the large sons of large centurions. Juvenal complains of their unfairness to the civilian (which suggests that he may never himself have been a high-ranking officer). But though Persius and Juvenal agree on centurions and Egyptians, they disagree on Greeks.

The sixth satire is addressed to Caesius Bassus, the only Latin lyric poet, apart from Horace, whom Quintilian mentions by name; after Persius's death he edited his poems for publication.

admovit iam bruma foco te, Basse, Sabino?
iamne lyra et tetrico vivunt tibi pectine chordae?
mire opifex numeris veterum primordia vocum
atque marem strepitum fidis intendisse Latinae,
mox iuvenes agitare iocos et pollice honesto
egregius lusisse senex.

(6.1 ff)

Has winter now brought you, Bassus, to your Sabine fireside? Do the lyre and the strings now come to life under your austere and truly Sabine quill? You are a remarkable craftsman at setting to numbers the beginnings of our ancient tongue and the virile hum of the Latin harp; and even in your old age you know how to stir youthful frolics and disport yourself with unimpeachable thumb.

Persius's manner is grander than usual, and also duller, but after all he is talking to a real poet. In particular one may remark that the first, fifth, and sixth lines have a caesura after the trochee in the third foot: this metrical pattern is often found in the flowery writings of the Silver Age, but the mannerism is alien to the satirist's normal style. Such variation is less common in Persius than in Horace and Juvenal, who often try fleeting imitations of more pretentious writers.

Persius goes on to say that he is wintering at Luna, on the Ligurian coast, near the modern La Spezia. This is one of his rare personal allusions, but he cannot do for the beautiful Riviera di Levante what Horace had done for his remote Sabine farm.

                                                                                          mihi nunc Ligus ora
intepet hibernatque meum mare qua latus ingens
dant scopuli et multa litus se valle receptat.
‘Lunai portum, est operae, cognoscite, cives.’
cor iubet hoc Enni, postquam destertuit esse
Maeonides Quintus pavone ex Pythagoreo.

(6.6 ff)

For me the Ligurian coast is warm and my own sea is wintering where the rocks present a huge cliff and the shore retreats in a deep gulf. ‘Acquaint yourselves—it's worth your pains—with the port of Luna, good people.’ So bade the wise heart of Ennius, after he had desnored the Maeonides of a Quintus, born from a Pythagorean peacock.

First Persius gives some poetical scene-painting, then a line from the Satires of Ennius.²¹ Finally he refers to the famous dream at the beginning of the Annals in which Ennius learned that he had lived previously as Homer, and before that, as a peacock. destertuit is coined by Persius for the occasion, and given the construction of destitit; Quintus has caused confusion, but simply refers to Ennius's first name. After his pompous prelude the satirist has triumphantly resumed his normal idiom.

Persius goes on to profess indifference to the riches of his neighbours, and the Horatian reminiscences appropriately thicken:

hic ego securus volgi et quid praeparet auster
infelix pecori, securus et angulus ille
vicini nostro quia pinguior, etsi adeo omnes
ditescant orti peioribus, usque recusem
curvus ob id minui senio aut cenare sine uncto
et signum in vapida naso tetigisse lagoena.

(6.12 ff)

Here I am indifferent to the crowd and the trouble that the south wind is brewing for the cattle, indifferent that the corner of my neighbour's land is more fertile than mine;—and even if all my inferiors grow rich, that's no reason why I should ever let myself droop with premature decay, or do without gravy to my dinner, or poke my nose into the seal on a flat bottle.

More satiric clichés follow: the twins with different temperaments, the miser seasoning his vegetables on his birthday, the shipwrecked sailor exhibiting a picture of his shipwreck. These commonplaces are not a sign of unoriginality. The satiric genre developed late, and had less distinctive characteristics than the other literary categories. Satirists had to make it clear what they were writing, and it was a matter of pride to introduce the stock situations.

About half of the satire is taken up by an obscure and badly-arranged address to an imaginary heir. The fear of letting one's property go to a stranger was no doubt common in the Roman empire; many rich men were childless, and posthumous philanthropy was less fashionable than in the Victorian age. But Persius's treatment has no relation to his own circumstances, and unlike Horace he fails to convince us that enlightened self-indulgence is a true facet of his character.

‘tune bona incolumis minuas?’ et Bestius urget
doctores Graios: ‘ita fit; postquam sapere urbi
cum pipere et palmis venit nostrum hoc maris expers
fenisecae crasso vitiarunt unguine pultes.’

(6.37 ff)

‘You're not going to impair your estate and get away with it’; and he harries the Greek teachers in the fashion of Bestius: ‘The usual story; since this savourless taste of ours came to town with pepper and dates, the haymakers have spoiled their porridge with thick sauces.’

The passage is unusually cryptic, even for Persius. maris expers is borrowed from Horace (Sat. 2.8.15), where it refers to Chian wine; since some sorts of Chian wine were ‘unmixed with seawater’ (Galen x, p. 833K) the phrase presumably means ‘saltless’ (not ‘emasculate’, as Casaubon and Housman took it). Commentators interpret doctores and sapere as ‘philosophers’ and ‘philosophy’, but it seems possible that ‘gastronomes’ and ‘taste for food’ are meant. Persius goes on to tell his unknown heir that he is going to celebrate a Roman victory. But not even here does he attempt a contemporary allusion: instead he has recourse to Caligula's ineffective German expedition, which took place when he was five.

Yet though Persius's theme is derivative and his argument confusing, he produces flashes of his old vivacity.

                                                                                                              age, si mihi nulla
iam reliqua ex amitis, patruelis nulla, proneptis
nulla manet patrui, sterilis matertera vixit
deque avia nihilum superest, accedo Bovillas
clivumque ad Virbi, praesto est mihi Manius heres.

(6.52 ff)

Look here, if there's none left of my father's sisters or his brother's daughters, if my uncle's great-granddaughters are all gone and my maternal aunt has died without issue, and if no descendant of my grandmother survives, then off I go to Bovillae and up the hill of Virbius, and there I find waiting a beggar for my heir.

With a mixture of Stoic logic and Cynic cynicism he then shows that even Manius the beggar is some sort of relative; so his heir ought to be grateful that he is getting anything at all.

qui prior es, cur me in decursu lampada poscis?
sum tibi Mercurius; venio deus huc ego ut ille
pingitur. an renuis? vis tu gaudere relictis?

(6.61 ff)

You are running in front, so don't ask for the baton before I've finished the lap. I'm appearing to you like Mercury in the picture, but my money-bags are real. Do you mean you refuse them? You ought to be thankful for what's left.

Persius is not going to starve himself for the benefit of his heir's dissolute grandson:

                                                                                                                                  mihi trama figurae
sit reliqua, ast illi tremat omento popa venter?

(6.73 f)

Am I to be left with a thread of a figure while his priest-paunch wobble with fat?

And so to the brilliant conclusion of an uneven satire.

vende animam lucro, mercare atque excute sollers
omne latus mundi, ne sit praestantior alter
Cappadocas rigida pinguis plausisse catasta.
rem duplica, ‘feci; iam triplex, iam mihi quarto,
iam decies redit in rugam. depunge ubi sistam,
inventus, Chrysippe, tui finitor acervi.’

(6.75 ff)

Sell your soul for profit, be a true trader and shrewdly ransack every continent, so that you have no superior at smacking plump Cappadocians on the hard²² auction-planks. Double your capital. ‘I have already done so. Now threefold, now fourfold, now tenfold have I folded it. Pin-point a stopping-place, and you have found the solution to Chrysippus's sorites.’

Chrysippus was the third head of the Stoic school, and some of his logical theories are still regarded as important.²³ The most notorious of his problems was the so-called ‘sorites’: how many grains do you remove from a heap before it ceases to be a heap? The scholiast tells us that some lines were deleted by Persius's executors at the end of the book; if so, they did their work skilfully. To Horace, Chrysippus was a Greek who wrote a lot of dull books: to Persius he was a serious philosopher.

Persius is conventionally accused of unoriginality, but his idiom is individual and has not been imitated. He is called obscure, but a reader familiar with the abruptness of diatribe would have found him less disconcerting. In any case obscurity is not the greatest fault of poets: insipidity is worse, and Persius is never that. He is undeniably grotesque; but satire could permit, and the twentieth century should condone, a certain angularity. He is said to be humourless, but his brisk dialogues and bizarre metaphors refute the charge. He had only one style, and major poets have more; but it is not the thesis of this paper that he was a major poet. He draws less directly on life than could be wished, but there is more than one way of writing poetry, and his attitudes are serious, consistent, and authentic. Above all he can write, and it is the ability to write (more than anything else) that distinguishes poets from other men. If you, reader, can do as well when you are twenty-seven, you will deserve more than the clumsy misapprehensions and patronizing rebukes which have been the fate of Persius.

Notes

1. The only reliable text is by W. V. Clausen; the edition of 1959 (with Juvenal) is sufficient for most purposes. There are valuable commentaries by Jahn (1843), Conington (1893), Villeneuve (1918). Translations are provided by Conington, and by G. G. Ramsay (Loeb, 1918).

2. ‘Persius also left to us onely one boke by the whiche he commyttyd his name and laude to perpetuall memory’ (Alexander Barclay in the preface to his Ship of Fools, 1509).

3. For testimonia see the edition by Santi Consoli, Rome, 1911.

4. R. M. Alden, The Rise of Formal Satire in England (Philadelphia, 1899); J. Peter, Complaint and Satire in Early English Literature (Oxford, 1956).

5. Essai sur Perse (Paris, 1918).

6. Classical Quarterly 7 (1913), 12 ff.

7. E. Guilpin, Skialetheia (1598), epig. 70:

   I know thow'lt doome them to th' Apotheta
   To wrap Sope in, and Assifoetida.

8. Post-Augustan Poetry (Oxford, 1909).

9. Mr. G. J. Toomer convinced me that tantae is wrong; Mr. A. F. Wells suggested tentae in an impromptu discussion, before we knew of Barth's emendation.

10. Aulus Gellius 12.2.10 duros quosdam versus et enormes.

11. The edictum is surely the praetor's edict, and not, as some commentators suppose, a play-bill.

12. The future apponet is a variant here. But Persius means simply that a birthday marks the passing of the years; he is not predicting for his friend a long and happy life.

13. For this and the following instance see Classical Quarterly N.S. 9 (1959), 73 ff.

14. Some parallels are quoted by E. S. McCartney, Classical Philology 43 (1948), 184 ff (I owe this reference to Dr. S. Weinstock).

15. Classical Philology 23 (1928), 337 ff.

16. See also J. Tate, ‘Was Persius a Micher?’ (Classical Review 42 (1928), 62 ff.; cf. 43 (1929), 56 ff.)

17. Imitated inadequately by Hall, Virgidemiarum ii, 2.47 ff.

18. In Psalm 102.16, Serm. 82.14, 224.4, Caes. Arel. Serm. 18.6, Cassiod. Hist. 5.27. I cannot resist quoting Barclay's Ship of Fools:

    They folowe the crowes cry to theyr great sorowe
    Cras cras cras to morowe we shall amende
    And if we mende nat then, than shall we the next morowe
    Outher shortly after, we shall no more offende
    Amende mad fole whan god this grace doth sende
    He is unwyse whiche trustes the crowes songe
    And that affermyth that he shall lyve so longe.

19. cf. Skelton, Garland of Laurel, ‘tressis agasonis species prior, altera Davi’.

20. See Lejay's edition of Horace's Satires, p. lxv. His introduction illuminates the connexion between diatribe and satire.

21. Housman, Classical Review 48 (1934), 50 f.

22. rigida is contrasted with pinguis. I cannot see why commentators interpret it as ‘high’.

23. See W. Kneale and M. Kneale, The Development of Logic (Oxford, 1962).