The Satires of A. Persius Flaccus
by Persius · Latin · Gutenberg #22119 · 528,580 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Satires of A. Persius Flaccus
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The Satires of A. Persius Flaccus
Author: Persius
Contributor: Otto Jahn
Editor: Basil L. Gildersleeve
Release date: July 22, 2007 [eBook #22119]
Language: Latin
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22119
Credits: Produced by Louise Hope, David Starner and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SATIRES OF A. PERSIUS FLACCUS ***
Produced by Louise Hope, David Starner and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Transcriber's Note:
This text is intended for users whose text readers cannot use the
"real" (unicode/utf-8) version of the file. Greek has been
transliterated and shown between +marks+. Other characters that could
not be fully displayed have been "unpacked" and shown between braces:
[)a] [)e] short vowels (printed with breve symbol)
[-a] [-e] [-i] [-o] long vowels (printed with macron)
In the Notes, the name "Vanicek" is given without hacek.
In the printed text, emphasis within italicized passages was shown by
gesperrt (spaced-out) text. This is shown here with #marks#, as is
#boldface# type. Bold and gesperrt never occur in the same contexts.
Italics are shown by _lines_. In the Critical Appendix, superscript
alpha and omega are shown as {a} and {w}.
The Notes and Critical Appendix were printed in a block at the end of
the book. For this e-text, they have been regrouped so each Satire
with its notes forms a discrete unit. In addition, the Satires alone--
totaling about 700 lines-- have been repeated at the beginning of the
text, before the Introduction.]
THE SATIRES
of
A. PERSIUS FLACCUS
Edited By
BASIL L. GILDERSLEEVE, Ph.D. (Göttingen), LL.D.,
Professor of Greek in the University of Virginia.
[Publisher's Device: +LAMPADIA ECHONTES DIADÔSOUSIN ALLÊLOIS+]
New York:
Harper & Brothers, Publishers,
Franklin Square.
1875.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by
HARPER & BROTHERS,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.
PREFACE.
The text of this edition of Persius is in the main that of Jahn's last
recension (1868). The few changes are discussed in the Notes and
recorded in the Critical Appendix.
In the preparation of the Notes I have made large use of Jahn's standard
edition, without neglecting the commentaries of Casaubon, König, and
Heinrich, or the later editions by Macleane, Pretor, and Conington, or
such recent monographs on Persius as I have been able to procure.
Special obligations have received special acknowledgment.
My personal contributions to the elucidation of Persius are too slight
to warrant me in following the prevalent fashion and cataloguing the
merits of my work under the modest guise of aims and endeavors. I shall
be contenf, if I have succeeded in making Persius less distasteful to
the general student; more than content, if those who have devoted long
and patient study to this difficult author shall accord me the credit of
an honest effort to make myself acquainted with the poet himself as well
as with his chief commentators.
In compliance with the wish of the distinguished scholar at whose
instance I undertook this work, Professor Charles Short, of Columbia
College, New York, I have inserted references to my Latin Grammar and to
the Grammar of Allen and Greenough, here and there to Madvig.
B. L. GILDERSLEEVE.
UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA, _February_, 1875.
CONTENTS.
Page
INTRODUCTION VII
A. PERSII FLACCI SATURARUM LIBER 39
VITA PERSII 65
NOTES 71
CRITICAL APPENDIX 207
INDEX 211
* * * * *
A. PERSII FLACCI
SATURARUM
LIBER.
[Duplicated material:
see Transcriber's Note at beginning of e-text.]
PROLOGUS.
Nec fonte labra prolui caballino,
nec in bicipiti somniasse Parnaso
memini, ut repente sic poeta prodirem.
Heliconidasque pallidamque Pirenen
illis remitto, quorum imagines lambunt 5
hederae sequaces: ipse semipaganus
ad sacra vatum carmen adfero nostrum.
quis expedivit psittaco suum chaere
picamque docuit nostra verba conari?
magister artis ingenique largitor 10
venter, negatas artifex sequi voces;
quod si dolosi spes refulserit nummi,
corvos poetas et poetridas picas
cantare credas Pegaseium nectar.
SATURA I.
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. non, si quid turbida Roma 5
elevet, accedas examenque inprobum in illa
castiges trutina, nec te quaesiveris extra.
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, 10
cum sapimus patruos; tunc, tunc, ignoscite-- 'Nolo.'
Quid faciam? sed sum petulanti splene cachinno.
Scribimus inclusi, numeros ille, his pede liber,
grande aliquid, quod pulmo animae praelargus anhelet.
scilicet haec populo pexusque togaque recenti 15
et natalicia tandem cum sardonyche albus
sede leges celsa, liquido cum plasmate guttur
mobile collueris, patranti fractus ocello.
hic neque more probo videas nec voce serena
ingentis trepidare Titos, cum carmina lumbum 20
intrant, et tremulo scalpuntur ubi intima versu.
tun, vetule, auriculis alienis colligis escas?
auriculis, quibus et dicas cute perditus _ohe_.
'Quo didicisse, nisi hoc fermentum et quae semel intus
innata est rupto iecore exierit caprificus?' 25
En pallor seniumque! o mores! usque adeone
scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter?
'At pulchrum est digito monstrari et dicier _hic est!_
ten cirratorum centum dictata fuisse
pro nihilo pendas?' Ecce inter pocula quaerunt 30
Romulidae saturi, quid dia poemata narrent.
hic aliquis, cui circa umeros hyacinthia laena est,
rancidulum quiddam balba de nare locutus,
Phyllidas Hypsipylas, vatum et plorabile si quid,
eliquat ac tenero supplantat verba palato. 35
adsensere viri: nunc non cinis ille poetae
felix? non levior cippus nunc inprimit ossa?
laudant convivae: nunc non e manibus illis,
nunc non e tumulo fortunataque favilla
nascentur violae? 'Rides' ait 'et nimis uncis 40
naribus indulges. an erit qui velle recuset
os populi meruisse et cedro digna locutus
linquere nec scombros metuentia carmina nec tus?'
Quisquis es, o, modo quem ex adverso dicere feci,
non ego cum scribo, si forte quid aptius exit, 45
quando haec rara avis est, si quid tamen aptius exit,
laudari metuam, neque enim mihi cornea fibra est;
sed recti finemque extremumque esse recuso
euge tuum et belle. nam belle hoc excute totum:
quid non intus habet? non hic est Ilias Atti 50
ebria veratro? non si qua elegidia crudi
dictarunt proceres? non quidquid denique lectis
scribitur in citreis? calidum seis ponere sumen,
scis comitem horridulum trita donare lacerna,
et 'verum' inquis 'amo: verum mihi dicite de me.' 55
qui pote? vis dicam? nugaris, cum tibi, calve,
pinguis aqualiculus protenso sesquipede exstet.
o Iane, a tergo quem nulla ciconia pinsit,
nec manus auriculas imitari mobilis albas,
nec linguae, quantum, sitiat canis Apula, tantae! 60
vos, o patricius sanguis, quos vivere fas est
occipiti caeco, posticae occurrite sannae!
Quis populi sermo est? quis enim, nisi carmina molli
nunc demum numero fluere, ut per leve severos
effundat iunctura unguis? scit tendere versum 65
non secus ac si oculo rubricam derigat uno.
sive opus in mores, in luxum, in prandia regum
dicere, res grandis nostro dat Musa poetae.
ecce modo heroas sensus adferre videmus
nugari solitos graece, nec ponere lucum 70
artifices nec rus saturum laudare, ubi corbes
et focus et porci et fumosa Palilia faeno,
unde Remus, sulcoque terens dentalia, Quinti,
cum trepida ante boves dictatorem induit uxor
et tua aratra domum lictor tulit-- euge poeta! 75
est nunc Brisaei quem venosus liber Acci,
sunt quos Pacuviusque et verrucosa moretur
Antiopa, aerumnis cor luctificabile fulta.
hos pueris monitus patres infundere lippos
cum videas, quaerisne, unde haec sartago loquendi 80
venerit in linguas, unde istuc dedecus, in quo
trossulus exsultat tibi per subsellia levis?
nilne pudet capiti non posse pericula cano
pellere, quin tepidum hoc optes audire _decenter_?
'Fur es' ait Pedio. Pedius quid? crimina rasis 85
librat in antithetis: doctas posuisse figuras
laudatur 'bellum hoc!' hoc bellum? an, Romule, ceves?
men moveat? quippe et, cantet si naufragus, assem
protulerim. cantas, cum fracta te in trabe pictum
ex umero portes? verum, nec nocte paratum 90
plorabit, qui me volet incurvasse querela.
'Sed numeris decor est et iunctura addita crudis.
cludere sic versum didicit _Berecyntius Attis_
et _qui caeruleum dirimebat Nerea delphin_
sic _costam longo subduximus Appennino_. 95
_Arma virum_, nonne hoc spumosum et cortice pingui,
ut ramale vetus vegrandi subere coctum?'
'Quidnam igitur tenerum et laxa cervice legendum?
_Torva mimalloneis inplerunt cornua bombis,_
_et raptum vitulo caput ablatura superbo_ 100
_Bassaris et lyncem Maenas flexura corymbis_
_euhion ingeminat, reparabilis adsonat echo?'_
haec fierent, si testiculi vena ulla paterni
viveret in nobis? summa delumbe saliva
hoc natat in labris, et in udo est Maenas et Attis, 105
nec pluteum caedit, nec demorsos sapit unguis.
'Sed quid opus teneras mordaci radere vero
auriculas? vide sis, ne maiorum tibi forte
limina frigescant: sonat hic de nare canina
littera.' Per me equidem sint omnia protinus alba; 110
nil moror. euge! omnes, omnes bene mirae eritis res.
hoc iuvat? 'hic' inquis 'veto quisquam faxit oletum.'
pinge duos anguis: pueri, sacer est locus, extra
meite! discedo. secuit Lucilius urbem,
te Lupe, te Muci, et genuinum fregit in illis; 115
omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico
tangit et admissus circum praecordia ludit,
callidus excusso populum suspendere naso:
men muttire nefas? nec clam, nec cum scrobe? nusquam?
hic tamen infodiam. vidi, vidi ipse, libelle: 120
auriculas asini quis non habet? hoc ego opertum,
hoc ridere meum, tam nil, nulla tibi vendo
Iliade. audaci quicumque adflate Cratino
iratum Eupolidem praegrandi cum sene palles,
aspice et haec, si forte aliquid decoctius audis. 125
inde vaporata lector mihi ferveat aure:
non hic, qui in crepidas Graiorum ludere gestit
sordidus, et lusco qui possit dicere 'lusce,'
sese aliquem credens, Italo quod honore supinus
fregerit heminas Arreti aedilis iniquas; 130
nec qui abaco numeros et secto in pulvere metas
scit risisse vafer, multum gaudere paratus,
si cynico barbam petulans nonaria vellat.
his mane edictum, post prandia Calliroen do.
SATURA II.
Hunc, Macrine, diem numera meliore lapillo
qui tibi labentis apponit candidus annos.
funde merum genio. non tu prece poscis emaci,
quae nisi seductis nequeas committere divis;
at bona pars procerum tacita libabit acerra. 5
haud cuivis promptum est murmurque humilisque susurros
tollere de templis et aperto vivere voto.
'Mens bona, fama, fides' haec clare et ut audiat hospes;
illa sibi introrsum et sub lingua murmurat 'o si
ebulliat patruus, praeclarum funus?' et 'o si 10
sub rastro crepet argenti mihi seria dextro
Hercule! pupillumve utinam, quem proximus heres
inpello, expungam! namque est scabiosus et acri
bile tumet. Nerio iam tertia conditur uxor.'
haec sancte ut poscas, Tiberino in gurgite mergis 15
mane caput bis terque et noctem flumine purgas?
heus age, responde-- minimum est quod scire laboro--
de Iove quid sentis? estne ut praeponere cures
hunc-- 'cuinam?' cuinam? vis Staio? an scilicet haeres?
quis potior index, puerisve quis aptior orbis? 20
hoc igitur, quo tu Iovis aurem inpellere temptas,
dic agedum Staio, 'pro Iuppiter! o bone' clamet
'Iuppiter!' at sese non clamet Iuppiter ipse?
ignovisse putas, quia, cum tonat, ocius ilex
sulpure discutitur sacro quam tuque domusque? 25
an quia non fibris ovium Ergennaque iubente
triste iaces lucis evitandumque bidental,
idcirco stolidam praebet tibi vellere barbam
Iuppiter? aut quidnam est, qua tu mercede deorum
emeris auriculas? pulmone et lactibus unctis? 30
Ecce avia aut metuens divum matertera cunis
exemit puerum frontemque atque uda labella
infami digito et lustralibus ante salivis
expiat, urentis oculos inhibere perita;
tunc manibus quatit et spem macram supplice voto 35
nunc Licini in campos, nunc Crassi mittit in aedis
'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. 40
Poscis opem nervis corpusque fidele senectae.
esto age; sed grandes patinae tuccetaque crassa
adnuere his superos vetuere Iovemque morantur.
Rem struere exoptas caeso bove Mercuriumque
arcessis fibra 'da fortunare Penatis, 45
da pecus et gregibus fetum!' quo, pessime, pacto,
tot tibi cum in flammas iunicum omenta liquescant
et tamen hic extis et opimo vincere ferto
intendit 'iam crescit ager, iam crescit ovile,
iam dabitur, iam iam!' donec deceptus et exspes 50
nequiquam fundo suspiret nummus in imo.
Si tibi creterras argenti incusaque pingui
auro dona feram, sudes et pectore laevo
excutiat guttas laetari praetrepidum cor.
hinc illud subiit, auro sacras quod ovato 55
perducis facies; nam fratres inter aenos
somnia pituita qui purgatissima mittunt,
praecipui sunto sitque illis aurea barba.
aurum vasa Numae Saturniaque inpulit aera
Vestalisque urnas et Tuscum fictile mutat. 60
o curvae in terris animae et caelestium inanes!
quid iuvat hoc, templis nostros inmittere mores
et bona dis ex hac scelerata ducere pulpa?
haec sibi corrupto casiam dissolvit olivo,
haec Calabrum coxit vitiato murice vellus, 65
haec bacam conchae rasisse et stringere venas
ferventis massae crudo de pulvere iussit.
peccat et haec, peccat: vitio tamen utitur. at vos
dicite, pontifices, in sancto quid facit aurum?
nempe hoc quod Veneri donatae a virgine pupae. 70
quin damus id superis, de magna quod dare lance
non possit magni Messallae lippa propago:
conpositum ius fasque animo sanctosque recessus
mentis et incoctum generoso pectus honesto.
haec cedo ut admoveam templis et farre litabo. 75
SATURA III.
'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 messis 5
iam dudum coquit et patula pecus omne sub ulmo est.'
unus ait comitum. "Verumne? itane? ocius adsit
huc aliquis! nemon?" turgescit vitrea bilis:
"findor"-- ut Arcadiae pecuaria rudere dicas.
iam liber et positis bicolor membrana capillis 10
inque manus chartae nodosaque venit harundo.
tunc querimur, crassus calamo quod pendeat umor,
nigra quod infusa vanescat sepia lympha;
dilutas querimur geminet quod fistula guttas.
o miser inque dies ultra miser, hucine rerum 15
venimus? at cur non potius teneroque columbo
et similis regum pueris pappare minutum
poscis et iratus mammae lallare recusas?
"An tali studeam calamo?" Cui verba? quid istas
succinis ambages? tibi luditur. effluis amens, 20
contemnere: sonat vitium percussa, maligne
respondet viridi non cocta fidelia limo.
udum et molle lutum es, nunc nunc properandus et acri
fingendus sine fine rota. sed rure paterno
est tibi far modicum, purum et sine labe salinum-- 25
quid metuas?-- cultrixque foci secura patella.
hoc satis? an deceat pulmonem rumpere ventis,
stemmate quod Tusco ramum millesime ducis,
censoremne tuum vel quod trabeate salutas?
ad populum phaleras! ego te intus et in cute novi. 30
non pudet ad morem discincti vivere Nattae?
sed stupet hic vitio et fibris increvit opimum
pingue, caret culpa, nescit quid perdat, et alto
demersus summa rursum non bullit in unda.
magne pater divum, saevos punire tyrannos 35
haud alia ratione velis, cum dira libido
moverit ingenium ferventi tincta veneno:
virtutem videant intabescantque relicta.
anne magis Siculi gemuerunt aera iuvenci,
et magis auratis pendens laquearibus ensis 40
purpureas subter cervices terruit, 'imus,
imus praecipites' quam si sibi dicat et intus
palleat infelix, quod proxima nesciat uxor?
Saepe oculos, memini, tangebam parvus olivo,
grandia si nollem morituri verba Catonis 45
discere, non sano multum laudanda magistro,
quae pater adductis sudans audiret amicis.
iure; etenim id summum, quid dexter senio ferret,
scire erat in voto; damnosa canicula quantum
raderet; angustae collo non fallier orcae; 50
neu quis callidior buxum torquere flagello.
haud tibi inexpertum curvos deprendere mores,
quaeque docet sapiens bracatis inlita Medis
porticus, insomnis quibus et detonsa iuventus
invigilat, siliquis et grandi pasta polenta; 55
et tibi quae Samios diduxit littera ramos
surgentem dextro monstravit limite callem.
stertis adhuc, laxumque caput conpage soluta
oscitat hesternum, dissutis undique malis!
est aliquid quo tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum? 60
an passim sequeris corvos testaque lutoque,
securus quo pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivis?
helleborum frustra, cum iam cutis aegra tumebit,
poscentis videas: venienti occurrite morbo!
et quid opus Cratero magnos promittere montis? 65
discite, o miseri, et causas cognoscite rerum:
quid sumus, et quidnam victuri gignimur; ordo
quis datus, aut metae qua mollis flexus et unde;
quis modus argento, quid fas optare, quid asper
utile nummus habet; patriae carisque propinquis 70
quantum elargiri deceat; quem te deus esse
iussit, et humana qua parte locatus es in re.
disce, nec invideas, quod multa fidelia putet
in locuplete penu, defensis pinguibus Umbris,
et piper et pernae, Marsi monumenta clientis, 75
menaque quod prima nondum defecerit orca.
Hic aliquis de gente hircosa centurionum
dicat 'Quod sapio satis est mihi. non ego curo
esse quod Arcesilas aerumnosique Solones,
obstipo capite et figentes lumine terram, 80
murmura cum secum et rabiosa silentia rodunt
atque exporrecto trutinantur verba labello,
aegroti veteris meditantes somnia, _gigni_
_de nihilo nihilum, in nihilum nil posse reverti._
hoc est, quod palles? cur quis non prandeat, hoc est?' 85
His populus ridet, multumque torosa iuventus
ingeminat tremulos naso crispante cachinnos.
'Inspice; nescio quid trepidat mihi pectus et aegris
faucibus exsuperat gravis alitus; inspice, sodes!'
qui dicit medico, iussus requiescere, postquam 90
tertia conpositas vidit nox currere venas,
de maiore domo modice sitiente lagoena
lenia loturo sibi Surrentina rogabit.
'Heus, bone, tu palles!' "Nihil est." 'Videas tamen istuc,
quidquid id est: surgit tacite tibi lutea pellis.' 95
"At tu deterius palles; ne sis mihi tutor;
iam pridem hunc sepeli: tu restas." 'Perge, tacebo.'
turgidus hic epulis atque albo ventre lavatur,
gutture sulpureas lente exalante mefites;
sed tremor inter vina subit calidumque triental 100
excutit e manibus, dentes crepuere retecti,
uncta cadunt laxis tunc pulmentaria labris.
hinc tuba, candelae, tandemque beatulus alto
conpositus lecto crassisque lutatus amomis
in portam rigidas calces extendit: at illum 105
hesterni capite induto subiere Quirites.
'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, 110
cor tibi rite salit? positum est algente catino
durum holus et populi cribro decussa farina:
temptemus fauces, tenero latet ulcus in ore
putre, quod haud deceat plebeia radere beta.
alges, cum excussit membris timor albus aristas; 115
nunc face supposita fervescit sanguis et ira
scintillant oculi, dicisque facisque, quod ipse
non sani esse hominis non sanus iuret Orestes.
SATURA IV.
'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. 5
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."
scis etenim iustum gemina suspendere lance 10
ancipitis librae, rectum discernis, ubi inter
curva subit, vel cum fallit pede regula varo,
et potis es nigrum vitio praefigere theta.
quin tu igitur, summa nequiquam pelle decorus,
ante diem blando caudam iactare popello 15
desinis, Anticyras melior sorbere meracas!
quae tibi summa boni est? uncta vixisse patella
semper et adsiduo curata cuticula sole?
exspecta, haud aliud respondeat haec anus. i nunc
"Dinomaches ego sum," suffla "sum candidus." esto; 20
dum ne deterius sapiat pannucia Baucis,
cum bene discincto cantaverit ocima vernae.'
Ut nemo in sese temptat descendere, nemo,
sed praecedenti spectatur mantica tergo!
quaesieris 'Nostin Vettidi praedia?' "Cuius?" 25
'Dives arat Curibus quantum non miluus errat.'
"Hunc ais, hunc dis iratis genioque sinistro,
qui, quandoque iugum pertusa ad compita figit,
seriolae veterem metuens deradere limum
ingemit: _hoc bene sit!_ tunicatum cum sale mordens 30
caepe et farrata pueris plaudentibus olla
pannosam faecem morientis sorbet aceti?"
at si unctus cesses et figas in cute solem,
est prope te ignotus, cubito qui tangat et acre
despuat 'hi mores! penemque arcanaque lumbi 35
runcantem populo marcentis pandere vulvas!
tu cum maxillis balanatum gausape pectas,
inguinibus quare detonsus gurgulio exstat?
quinque palaestritae licet haec plantaria vellant
elixasque nates labefactent forcipe adunca, 40
non tamen ista filix ullo mansuescit aratro.'
caedimus inque vicem praebemus crura sagittis.
vivitur hoc pacto; sic novimus. ilia subter
caecum vulnus habes; sed lato balteus auro
praetegit. ut mavis, da verba et decipe nervos, 45
si potes. 'Egregium cum me vicinia dicat,
non credam?' Viso si palles, inprobe, nummo,
si facis in penem quidquid tibi venit amarum,
si puteal multa cautus vibice flagellas:
nequiquam populo bibulas donaveris aures. 50
respue, quod non es; tollat sua munera cerdo;
tecum habita: noris, quam sit tibi curta supellex.
SATURA V.
Vatibus hic mos est, centum sibi poscere voces,
centum ora et linguas optare in carmina centum,
fabula seu maesto ponatur hianda tragoedo,
vulnera seu Parthi ducentis ab inguine ferrum.
'Quorsum haec? aut quantas robusti carminis offas 5
ingeris, ut par sit centeno gutture niti?
grande locuturi nebulas Helicone legunto,
si quibus aut Prognes, aut si quibus olla Thyestae
fervebit, saepe insulso cenanda Glyconi;
tu neque anhelanti, coquitur dum massa camino, 10
folle premis ventos, nec clauso murmure raucus
nescio quid tecum grave cornicaris inepte,
nec scloppo tumidas intendis rumpere buccas.
verba togae sequeris iunctura callidus acri,
ore teres modico, pallentis radere mores 15
doctus et ingenuo culpam defigere ludo.
hinc trahe quae dicis, mensasque relinque Mycenis
cum capite et pedibus, plebeiaque prandia noris.'
Non equidem hoc studeo, bullatis ut mihi nugis
pagina turgescat, dare pondus idonea fumo. 20
secreti loquimur; tibi nunc hortante Camena
excutienda damus praecordia, quantaque nostrae
pars tua sit, Cornute, animae, tibi, dulcis amice,
ostendisse iuvat: pulsa, dinoscere cautus,
quid solidum crepet et pictae tectoria linguae. 25
his ego centenas ausim deposcere voces,
ut, quantum mihi te sinuoso in pectore fixi,
voce traham pura, totumque hoc verba resignent,
quod latet arcana non enarrabile fibra.
Cum primum pavido custos mihi purpura cessit 30
bullaque succinctis Laribus donata pependit;
cum blandi comites totaque inpune Subura
permisit sparsisse oculos iam candidus umbo;
cumque iter ambiguum est et vitae nescius error
deducit trepidas ramosa in compita mentes, 35
me tibi supposui: teneros tu suscipis annos
Socratico, Cornute, sinu; tum fallere sollers
apposita intortos extendit regula mores,
et premitur ratione animus vincique laborat
artificemque tuo ducit sub pollice vultum. 40
tecum etenim longos memini consumere soles,
et tecum primas epulis decerpere noctes:
unum opus et requiem pariter disponimus ambo,
atque verecunda laxamus seria mensa.
non equidem hoc dubites, amborum foedere certo 45
consentire dies et ab uno sidere duci
nostra vel aequali suspendit tempora Libra
Parca tenax veri, seu nata fidelibus hora
dividit in Geminos concordia fata duorum,
Saturnumque gravem nostro Iove frangimus una: 50
nescio quod, certe est, quod me tibi temperat astrum.
Mille hominum species et rerum discolor usus;
velle suum cuique est, nec voto vivitur uno.
mercibus hic Italis mutat sub sole recenti
rugosum piper et pallentis grana cumini, 55
hic satur inriguo mavult turgescere somno;
hic campo indulget, hunc alea decoquit, ille
in Venerem putris; sed cum lapidosa cheragra
fregerit articulos, veteris ramalia fagi,
tunc crassos transisse dies lucemque palustrem 60
et sibi iam seri vitam ingemuere relictam.
at te nocturnis iuvat inpallescere chartis;
cultor enim iuvenum purgatas inseris aures
fruge Cleanthea. petite hinc puerique senesque
finem animo certum miserisque viatica canis! 65
'Cras hoc fiet.' Idem cras fiet. '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.
nam quamvis prope te, quamvis temone sub uno 70
vertentem sese frustra sectabere cantum,
cum rota posterior curras et in axe secundo.
Libertate opus est, non hac, ut, quisque Velina
Publius emeruit, scabiosum tesserula far
possidet. heu steriles veri, quibus una Quiritem 75
vertigo facit! hic Dama est non tressis agaso,
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? 80
Marcus dixit: ita est; adsigna, Marce, tabellas.
haec mera libertas; hoc nobis pillea donant!
'An quisquam est alius liber, nisi ducere vitam
cui licet, ut voluit? licet ut volo vivere: non sum
liberior Bruto?' "Mendose colligis," inquit 85
stoicus hic aurem mordaci lotus aceto
"haec reliqua accipio; _licet_ illud et _ut volo_ tolle."
'Vindicta postquam meus a praetore recessi,
cur mihi non liceat, iussit quodcumque voluntas,
excepto si quid Masuri rubrica vetavit?' 90
Disce, sed ira cadat naso rugosaque sanna,
dum veteres avias tibi de pulmone revello.
non praetoris erat stultis dare tenuia rerum
officia atque usum rapidae permittere vitae:
sambucam citius caloni aptaveris alto. 95
stat contra ratio et secretam garrit in aurem,
ne liceat facere id quod quis vitiabit agendo.
publica lex hominum naturaque continet hoc fas,
ut teneat vetitos inscitia debilis actus.
diluis helleborum, certo conpescere puncto 100
nescius examen: vetat hoc natura medendi.
navem si poscat sibi peronatus arator,
luciferi rudis, exclamet Melicerta perisse
frontem de rebus. tibi recto vivere talo
ars dedit, et veri speciem dinoscere calles, 105
ne qua subaerato mendosum tinniat anro?
quaeque sequenda forent, quaeque evitanda vicissim,
illa prius creta, mox haec carbone notasti?
es modicus voti? presso lare? dulcis amicis?
iam nunc astringas, iam nunc granaria laxes, 110
inque luto fixum possis transcendere nummum,
nec glutto sorbere salivam Mercurialem?
'haec mea sunt, teneo' cum vere dixeris, esto
liberque ac sapiens praetoribus ac Iove dextro,
sin tu, cum fueris nostrae paulo ante farinae, 115
pelliculam veterem retines et fronte politus
astutam vapido servas sub pectore vulpem,
quae dederam supra relego funemque reduco:
nil tibi concessit ratio; digitum exsere, peccas,
et quid tam parvum est? sed nullo ture litabis, 120
haereat in stultis brevis ut semuncia recti.
haec miscere nefas; nec, cum sis cetera fossor,
tris tantum ad numeros satyrum moveare Bathylli.
'Liber ego.' Unde datum hoc sentis, tot subdite rebus?
an dominum ignoras, nisi quem vindicta relaxat? 125
'I puer et strigiles Crispini ad balnea defer!'
si increpuit, 'cessas nugator;' servitium acre
te nihil impellit, nec quicquam extrinsecus intrat,
quod nervos agitet; sed si intus et in iecore aegro
nascuntur domini, qui tu inpunitior exis 130
atque hic, quem ad strigiles scutica et metus egit erilis?
Mane piger stertis. 'Surge!' inquit Avaritia 'heia
surge!' Negas; instat 'Surge!' inquit. "Non queo." 'Surge!'
"Et quid agam?" 'Rogitas? en saperdam advehe Ponto,
castoreum, stuppas, hebenum, tus, lubrica Coa; 135
tolle recens primus piper ex sitiente camelo;
verte aliquid; iura.' "Sed Iuppiter audiet." 'Eheu!
varo, regustatum digito terebrare salinum
contentus perages, si vivere cum Iove tendis!'
iam pueris pellem succinctus et oenophorum aptas 140
'Ocius ad navem!' nihil obstat, quin trabe vasta
Aegaeum rapias, ni sollers Luxuria ante
seductum moneat 'Quo deinde, insane, ruis? quo?
quid tibi vis? calido sub pectore mascula bilis
intumuit, quod non exstinxerit urna cicutae? 145
tu mare transilias? tibi torta cannabe fulto
cena sit in transtro, Veientanumque rubellum
exalet vapida laesum pice sessilis obba?
quid petis? ut nummi, quos hic quincunce modesto
nutrieras, pergant avidos sudare deunces? 150
indulge genio, carpamus dulcia! nostrum est
quod vivis; cinis et manes et fabula fies.
vive memor leti! fugit hora; hoc quod loquor inde est.'
en quid agis? duplici in diversum scinderis hamo.
huncine, an hunc sequeris? subeas alternus oportet 155
ancipiti obsequio dominos, alternus oberres.
nec tu, cum obstiteris semel instantique negaris
parere imperio, 'rupi iam vincula' dicas;
nam et luctata canis nodum abripit; et tamen illi,
cum fugit, a collo trahitur pars longa catenae. 160
'Dave, cito, hoc credas iubeo, finire dolores
praeteritos meditor.' crudum Chaerestratus unguem
adrodens ait haec 'an siccis dedecus obstem
cognatis? an rem patriam rumore sinistro
limen ad obscenum frangam, dum Chrysidis udas 165
ebrius ante fores exstincta cum face canto?'
"Euge, puer, sapias, dis depellentibus agnam
percute." 'Sed censen plorabit, Dave, relicta?'
"Nugaris; solea, puer, obiurgabere rubra.
ne trepidare velis atque artos rodere casses! 170
nunc ferus et violens; at si vocet, haud mora, dicas:
_Quidnam igitur faciam? nec nunc, cum arcessat et ultro_
_supplicet, accedam?_ Si totus et integer illinc
exieras, nec nunc." hic hic, quod quaerimus, hic est,
non in festuca, lictor quam iactat ineptus. 175
ius habet ille sui palpo, quem ducit hiantem
cretata ambitio? vigila et cicer ingere large
rixanti populo, nostra ut Floralia possint
aprici meminisse senes: _quid pulchrius?_ at cum
Herodis venere dies, unctaque fenestra 180
dispositae pinguem nebulam vomuere lucernae
portantes violas, rubrumque amplexa catinum
cauda natat thynni, tumet alba fidelia vino:
labra moves tacitus recutitaque sabbata palles.
tum nigri lemures ovoque pericula rupto, 185
tum grandes galli et cum sistro lusca sacerdos
incussere deos inflantis corpora, si non
praedictum ter mane caput gustaveris alli.
Dixeris haec inter varicosos centuriones,
continuo crassum ridet Pulfennius ingens, 190
et centum Graecos curto centusse licetur.
SATURA VI.
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 iocis et pollice honesto 5
egregius lusisse senes. 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 10
Maeonides, Quintus pavone ex Pythagoreo.
hic ego securus vulgi et quid praeparet auster
infelix pecori, securus et angulus ille
vicini nostro quia pinguior, etsi adeo omnes
ditescant orti peioribus, usque recusem 15
curvus ob id minui senio aut cenare sine uncto,
et signum in vapida naso tetigisse lagoena.
discrepet his alius! geminos, horoscope, varo
producis genio. solis natalibus est qui
tingat holus siccum muria vafer in calice empta, 20
ipse sacrum inrorans patinae piper; hic bona dente
grandia magnanimus peragit puer. utar ego, utar,
nec rhombos ideo libertis ponere lautus,
nec tenuis sollers turdarum nosse salivas.
messe tenus propria vive et granaria, fas est, 25
emole; quid metuis? occa, et seges altera in herba est.
ast vocat officium: trabe rupta Bruttia saxa
prendit amicus inops, remque omnem surdaque vota
condidit Ionio; iacet ipse in litore et una
ingentes de puppe dii, iamque obvia mergis 30
costa ratis lacerae. nunc et de caespite vivo
frange aliquid, largire inopi, ne pictus oberret
caerulea in tabula. 'Sed cenam funeris heres
negleget, iratus quod rem curtaveris; urnae
ossa inodora dabit, seu spirent cinnama surdum, 35
seu ceraso peccent casiae, nescire paratus.
tune bona incolumis minuas? et Bestius urguet
doctores Graios: _Ita fit, postquam sapere urbi_
_cum pipere et palmis venit nostrum hoc maris expers;_
_fenisecae crasso vitiarunt unguine pultes._' 40
Haec cinere ulterior metuas? At tu, meus heres
quisquis eris, paulum a turba seductior audi.
o bone, num ignoras? missa est a Caesare laurus
insignem ob cladem Germanae pubis, et aris
frigidus excutitur cinis, ac iam postibus arma, 45
iam chlamydes regum, iam lutea gausapa captis
essedaque ingentesque locat Caesonia Rhenos.
dis igitur genioque ducis centum paria ob res
egregie gestas induco; quis vetat? aude.
vae, nisi conives! oleum artocreasque popello 50
largior; an prohibes? dic clare! 'Non adeo,' inquis
'exossatus ager iuxta est.' Age, si mihi nulla
iam reliqua ex amitis, patruelis nulla, proneptis
nulla manet patrui, sterilis matertera vixit,
deque avia nihilum superest, accedo Bovillas 55
clivumque ad Virbi, praesto est mihi Manius heres.
'Progenies terrae?' Quaere ex me, quis mihi quartus
sit pater: haud prompte, dicam tamen; adde etiam unum,
unum etiam: terrae est iam filius, et mihi ritu
Manius hic generis prope maior avunculus exit. 60
qui prior es, cur me in decursu lampada poscis?
sum tibi Mercurius; venio deus huc ego ut ille
pingitur; an renuis? vin tu gaudere relictis?
'Dest aliquid summae.' Minui mihi; sed tibi totum est,
quidquid id est. ubi sit, fuge quaerere, quod mihi quondam 65
legarat Tadius, neu dicta repone paterna:
_Faenoris accedat merces; hinc exime sumptus._
_quid reliquum est?_ Reliquum? nunc, nunc inpensius ungue,
ungue, puer, caules! mihi festa luce coquetur
urtica et fissa fumosum sinciput aure, 70
ut tuus iste nepos olim satur anseris extis,
cum morosa vago singultiet inguine vena,
patriciae inmeiat vulvae? mihi trama figurae
sit reliqua, ast illi tremat omento popa venter?
vende animam lucro, mercare atque excute sollers 75
omne latus mundi, nec sit praestantior alter
Cappadocas rigida pinguis plausisse castata:
rem duplica. 'Feci; iam triplex, iam mihi quarto,
iam deciens redit in rugam: depunge, ubi sistam.'
Inventus, Chrysippe, tui finitor acervi. 80
[End of duplicated material:
see Transcriber's Note at beginning of e-text.]
* * * * *
_Quando cerco norme di gusto, vado ad Orazio, il più amabile;
quando ho bisogno di bile contra le umane ribalderie, visito
Giovenale, il più splendido; quando mi studio d'esser onesto,
vivo con PERSIO, il più saggio, e con infinito piacere mescolato
di vergogna bevo li dettati della ragione su le labbra di questo
verecondo e santissimo giovanetto._ VINCENZO MONTI.
+Sunistanto hoi men hôs touton, hoi d' hôs ekeinon plên monou
tou Iônos; ekeinos de meson heauton ephulatten.+ +LOUKIANOU.+
_PERSIUS das rechte Ideal eines hoffärtigen und mattherzigen
der Poesie beflissenen Jungen._ MOMMSEN.
* * * * *
INTRODUCTION.
An ancient _Vita Persii_, of uncertain authorship, of evident
authenticity, gives all that it is needful for us to know about our
poet-- much more than is vouchsafed to us for the rich individuality of
Lucilius, much more than we can divine for the unsubstantial character
of Juvenal.
Aulus Persius Flaccus was born on the day before the nones of December,
A.U.C. 787, A.D. 34, at Volaterrae, in Etruria. That Luna in Liguria was
his birthplace is a false inference of some scholars from the words
_meum mare_ in a passage of the sixth satire, where he describes his
favorite resort on the Riviera.
The family of Persius belonged to the old Etruscan nobility, and more
than one Persius appears in inscriptions found at Volaterrae. Other
circumstances make for his Etruscan origin: the Etruscan form of his
name, _Aules_, so written in most MSS. of his Life; the Etruscan name of
his mother, Sisennia; the familiar spitefulness of his mention of
Arretium, the allusions to the Tuscan haruspex, to the Tuscan pedigree;
the sneering mention of the Umbrians-- fat-witted folk, who lived across
the Tuscan border. Most of these, it is true, are minute points, and
would be of little weight in the case of an author of wider vision, but
well-nigh conclusive in a writer like Persius, who tried to make up for
the narrowness of his personal experience by a microscopic attention to
details.
Persius belonged to the same sphere of society as Maecenas. Like
Maecenas an Etruscan, he was, like Maecenas, an _eques Romanus_. The
social class of which he was a member did much for Roman literature;
Etruria's contributions were far less valuable, and Mommsen is right
when he recognizes in both these men, so unlike in life and in
principle-- the one a callous wordling, the other a callow philosopher--
the stamp of their strange race, a race which is a puzzle rather than a
mystery. Indeed, the would-be mysterious is one of the most salient
points in the style of Persius as in the religion of the Etruscans, and
Persius's elaborate involution of the commonplace is parallel with the
secret wisdom of his countrymen. The minute detail of the Etruscan
ritual has its counterpart in the minute detail of Persius's style, and
the want of a due sense of proportion and a certain coarseness of
language in our author remind us of the defects of Etruscan art and the
harshness of the Etruscan tongue.
Persius was born, if not to great wealth, at least to an ample
competence. His father died when the poet was but six years old, and his
education was conducted at Volaterrae under the superintendence of his
mother and her second husband, Fusius. For the proper appreciation of
the career of Persius, it is a fact of great significance that he seems
to have been very much under the influence of the women of his
household. To this influence he owed the purity of his habits; but
feminine training is not without its disadvantages for the conduct of
life. For social refinement there is no better school; but the pet of
the home circle is apt to make the grossest blunders when he ventures
into the larger world of no manners, and attempts to use the language of
outside sinners. And so, when Persius undertakes to rebuke the
effeminacy of his time, he outbids the worst passages of Horace and
rivals the most lurid indecencies of Juvenal.
When Persius was twelve years old he went to Rome, as Horace and Ovid
had done before him, for the purpose of a wider and higher education,
and was put to school with Verginius Flaccus, the rhetorician, and
Remmius Palaemon, the grammarian. Verginius Flaccus was exiled from Rome
by Nero, with Musonius Rufus, on account of the prominence which he had
achieved as a teacher, and Quintilian quotes him as an authority in his
profession. Remmius Palaemon, the other teacher of Persius, a man of
high attainments and low principles, was one of the most illustrious
grammarians of a time when grammarians could be illustrious. A freedman,
with a freedman's character, he was arrogant and vain, grasping and
prodigal-- in short, a Sir Epicure Mammon of a professor. But his
prodigious memory, his ready flow of words, his power of improvising
poetry, attracted many pupils during his prolonged life, and after his
death he was cited with respect by other grammarians-- a rare apotheosis
among that captious tribe. The first satirical efforts of ingenuous
youth are usually aimed at their preceptors, and the verses which
Persius quotes in the First Satire are quite as likely to be from the
school of Palaemon as from the poems of Nero.
But the true teacher of Persius, the man to whom he himself attributed
whatever progress he made in that 'divine philosophy' which deals at
once with the constitution of the universe and the conduct of life-- his
'spiritual director,' to use the language of Christian ascetics-- was
Cornutus. Persius is one of those literary celebrities whose title to
fame is not beyond dispute; and while some maintain his right to high
distinction on the ground of intrinsic merit, others seek with perhaps
too much avidity for the accidents to which he is supposed to owe his
renown. If it is necessary to excuse, as it were, his reputation, the
relation of Persius to Cornutus might go far to explain the care which
schoolmasters have taken of the memory of the poet. No matter how
crabbed the teacher may be, how austere the critic, the opening of the
Fifth Satire, with its warm tribute to the guide of his life and the
friend of his heart, calls up the image of the ideal pupil, and touches
into kindred the brazen bowels of Didymus.
Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, of Leptis in Africa, was a philosopher,
grammarian, and rhetorician. It has been conjectured that he was a
freedman of the literary family of the Annaei; and this is rendered
probable by the fact that Annaeus Lucanus, the nephew of Annaeus Seneca,
was his pupil. The year of his life and the year of his death are alike
unknown. He was banished from Rome by Nero because he had ventured to
suggest that Nero's projected epic on Roman history would be too long if
drawn out to four hundred books, and that the imperial poem would find
no readers. When one of Nero's flatterers rejoined that Chrysippus was a
still more voluminous author, Cornutus had the bad taste to point out
the practical importance of the writings of Chrysippus in contrast with
Nero's unpractical project; and Nero, who had a poet's temper, if not a
poet's gifts, sent him to an island, there to revise his literary
judgment. Cornutus was not only a man of various learning in philosophy,
rhetoric, and grammar, but a tragic poet of some note, and perhaps a
satirist. Whether the jumble that bears the name of Cornutus or
Phurnutus, _De Natura Deorum_, is in any measure traceable to our
Cornutus, is not pertinent to our subject. Of more importance to us than
his varied attainments is his pure and lofty character, which made him
worthy of the ardent affection with which Persius clung to his 'Socratic
bosom.' It is recorded to his honor that Persius having bequeathed to
him his library and a considerable sum of money, he accepted the books
only and relinquished the money to the family of Persius. Nor did he
cease his loving care for his friend after his ashes, but revised his
satires, and suppressed the less mature performances of the young poet.
The social circle in which Persius moved was not wide. The mark of the
beast called Coterie, which is upon the foreheads of the most
plentifully belaurelled Roman poets, is on his brow also. But it must be
said that the men whom he associated with belonged to the chosen few of
a corrupt time, albeit they would have been of more service to their
country if they had not recognized themselves so conspicuously as the
elect. The Stoic _salon_ in which Persius lived and moved and had his
being reminds M. Martha of a Puritan household; it reminds us of the
sequestered Legitimist opposition to the France of yesterday. We are so
apt to see parallels when we are well acquainted with but one of the
lines-- or with neither.
Let us pass in review some of the associates and acquaintances of
Persius.
Among his early friends was Caesius Bassus, to whom the Sixth Satire is
addressed: an older contemporary, who had studied with the same master,
next to Horace, by a long remove, among the Roman lyrists. To his
fellow-pupils belong Calpurnius, who is more than doubtfully identified
with the author of the Bucolics; and Lucan (Annaeus Lucanus), the poet
of the Pharsalia, who shared with him the instructions of Cornutus, and
is said to have shown the most fervent admiration of the genius of his
school-fellow. We are told that when the First Satire was recited, Lucan
exclaimed that these were true poems. Whether he accompanied this
encomium with a disparagement of his own performances, or simply had
reference to the modest disclaimer of Persius's Prologue, as Jahn is
inclined to think, does not appear. The anecdote is in perfect keeping
with the perfervid Spanish temper of Lucan and Lucan's family. But this
momentary burst of admiration is no indication of any genuine sympathy
between the effusive and rhetorical Cordovan and the shy, philosophical
Etruscan. Nominally they belonged to the same school-- the Stoic; but
Persius was ready to resist unto blood, Lucan's Stoicism was a mere
parade.
While this anecdote leaves us in suspense as to the relations between
Lucan and Persius, we have express evidence that there was no sympathy
between Persius and Seneca. They met, we are informed, but the poet took
little pleasure in the society of the essayist. This is not the place to
attempt a characteristic of this famous writer, who, like Persius,
leaves few readers indifferent. Once the idol of the moralists-- who of
all old birds are the most easily caught with chaff-- Seneca has fallen
into comparative disfavor within the last few decades; yet sometimes a
vigorous champion starts up to do battle for him, such as Farrar in
England, and, with more moderation, Constant Martha in France; and his
cause is by no means hopeless if the advocate can keep his hearers from
reading Seneca for themselves. It is impossible not to admire Seneca in
passages; it seems very difficult to retain the admiration after reading
him continuously. The glittering phrase masks a poverty of thought; 'the
belt with its broad gold covers a hidden wound.' To Persius, the
youthful Stoic, with his high purpose and his transcendental views of
life, Seneca the courtier, the time-server, the adroit flatterer, must
have appeared little better than a hypocrite, or, which is worse to an
ardent mind, a practical negation of his own aspirations. The young
convert-- and Persius's philosophy was Persius's religion-- in the first
glow of his enthusiasm, must have been repelled by the callousness of
the older professor of the same faith. And yet so strong was the impress
of the age that Persius and Seneca are not so far asunder after all. To
understand Persius we must read Seneca; and the lightning stroke of
Caligula's tempestuous brain, _harena sine calce_, illuminates and
shivers the one as well as the other.
If the family of the Annaei did not prove congenial, there were others
to whom Persius might look for sympathy and instruction. Such was
M. Servilius Nonianus, a man of high position, of rare eloquence, of
unsullied fame. Such was Plotius Macrinus, to whom the Second Satire is
addressed, itself a eulogy. Even in his own family circle there were
persons whose lofty characters have made them celebrated in history. His
kinswoman Arria, herself destined to become famous for her devotion to
her husband, was the wife of Thrasea Paetus, and the daughter of that
other Arria, whose supreme cry, NON DOLET, when she taught her husband
how to meet his doom, is one of the most familiar speeches of a period
when speech was bought with death. Thrasea, the husband of the younger
Arria, was one of the foremost men of his time, and bore himself with a
moderation which contrasts strongly with the ostentatious virtue of some
of the Stoic chiefs. He rebuked the vices of his time unsparingly, but
steadily observed the respect due to the head of the state; and even
when the decree was passed which congratulated Nero on the murder of his
mother, he contented himself with retiring from the senate-house. But
Thrasea's silent disapproval of one crime fired Nero to another, and his
refusal to deprecate the wrath of the emperor was the cause of his
ruin-- if that could be called ruin which he welcomed as he poured out
his blood in libation to Jupiter the Liberator.
That the familiar intercourse with such a man should have inspired a
youth of the education and the disposition of Persius with still higher
resolves and still higher endeavors is not strange. That it sufficed, as
some say, to penetrate Persius with the sober wisdom of maturer years,
and made up to him for the lack of personal experience and artistic
balance, is attributing more to association than association can
accomplish.
To Thrasea's influence Jahn ascribes Persius's juvenile essays in the
preparation of _praetextae_, or tragedies with Roman themes, and it is
not unlikely that a poetical description of his travels (+hodoiporikôn+)
referred to some little trip that he took with Thrasea. Thanks to
Cornutus, this youthful production-- which doubtless was nothing more
than a weak imitation of Horace, or haply of Lucilius-- was suppressed
after the death of the author, and with it his _praetexta_, and a short
poem in honor of the elder Arria also.
The purity of Persius's morals, and the love which he bore his mother,
his sister, his aunt, stand to each other reciprocally as cause and
effect; and the occasional crudity of his language is, as we have
already seen, the crudity of a bookish man, who thinks that the sure way
to do a thing is to overdo it. Persius was a man of handsome person,
gentle bearing, attractive manners, and added to the charm of his
society the interest which always gathers about those whom the gods
love.
He died on his estate at the eighth milestone on the Appian Road, _vitio
stomachi_, eight days before the kalends of December, A.U.C. 815-- A.D.
62-- in the twenty-eighth year of his age.
Cornutus first revised the satires of his friend, and then gave them to
Caesius Bassus to edit. The only important change that Cornutus made was
the substitution of _quis non_ for _Mida rex_ (1,121), a subject which
is discussed in the Commentary. Other traces of wavering expression and
_duplex recensio_ are due to the imagination of commentators, who
attribute to the young poet a logical method and an exactness of
development for which the style of Persius gives them no warrant. _Raro
et tarde scripsit_, the statement of the Life of Persius, explains much.
The poems of Persius were received with applause as soon as they
appeared, and the old _Vita Persii_ would have us believe that people
scrambled for the copies as if the pages were so many Sabine women.
Quintilian, in his famous inventory of Greek and Roman literature, says
that Persius earned a great deal of glory, and true glory, by a single
book, and here and there the great scholar does Persius homage by
imitating him; and Martial holds up Persius with his one book of price,
as a contrast to the empty bulk of a half-forgotten epic. But it would
not be worth the while to repeat the list of the admirers of Persius in
the ages of later Latinity. It suffices to say that he was the special
favorite of the Latin Fathers. Augustin quotes or imitates him often,
and Jerome is saturated with the phraseology of our poet. Commended to
Christian teachers by the elevation of his moral tone, by the pithiness
of his maxims and reflections, and the energy of his figures, he was set
up on a high chair, a big school-boy, to teach other school-boys, and
scarcely a voice was raised in rebellion for centuries. But since the
time of the Scaligers, who were not to be kept back by any consideration
for the feelings of the Fathers, there has been much unfriendly
criticism of Persius; and the world owes him a debt of gratitude for
provoking an animosity that has opened the way to a freer discussion of
the literary merits of the authors of antiquity. To be subject all one's
life through fear of literary death to the bondage of antique dullness,
as well as to the thraldom of contemporary stupidity, would have been a
sad result of the revival of letters.
The first and last charge brought against Persius is his obscurity.
Admitted by all, it is variously interpreted variously excused,
variously attacked. Now it is accounted for by the political necessities
of the time. Now it is attributed to the perverse ingenuity of the poet,
which was fostered by the perverse tendencies of an age when, as
Quintilian says, _Pervasit iam multos ista persuasio ut id iam demum
eleganter dictum putent quod interpretandum sit_. Some simply resolve
the lack of clearness into the lack of artistic power; others intimate
that the fault lies more in the reader than in the author, whose
dramatic liveliness, which puzzles us, presented no difficulties to the
critics of his own century. But the controversy is not confined to the
obscurity of the satires, Persius is all debatable ground. Some admire
the pithy sententiousness of the poet; others sneer at his priggish
affectation of superiority. Some point to the bookish reminiscences,
which bewray the mere student; others recall the example of Ben Jonson,
of Molière, to show that in literature, as in life, the greatest
borrowers are often the richest men, and bid us observe with what rare
and vivid power he has painted every scene that he has witnessed with
his own eyes. To some he is a copyist of copyists; to others his real
originality asserts itself most conspicuously where the imitation seems
to be the closest. Julius Scaliger calls him _miserrimus auctor_; Mr.
Conington notes his kindred to Carlyle.
No critic has put the problem with more brutal frankness than M. Nisard,
who, at the close of his flippant but suggestive chapter on Persius,
asks the question, _Y a-t-il profit à lire Perse_? Though he makes a
faint show of balancing the Ayes and Noes, it is very plain how he
himself would vote. The impatient Frenchman is evidently not of a mind
'to read prefaces, biographies, memoirs, and commentaries on these
prefaces, these biographies, these memoirs, and notes on these
commentaries, in order to form an idea that will haply be very false and
assuredly very debatable, of a work about which no one will ever talk to
you, and of a poet about whom you will never find any one to talk to.'
But the question, which may be an open one to a critic, is not an open
one to an editor; and editors of Persius are especially prone to value
their author by the labor which he has cost them, by the material which
they have gathered about the text. The thoughts are, after all, so
common that parallels are to be found on every hand; the compass is so
small that it is an easy matter to carry in the memory every word, every
phrase; and so-called illustrations suggest themselves even to an
ordinary scholar in bewildering numbers, while the looseness of the
connection gives ample scope to speculation. Hence the sarcasm of Joseph
Scaliger: _Non pulchra habet sed in eum pulcherrima possumus scribere_;
and the well-known criticism of the same scholar: _Au Perse de Casaubon
la saulce vaut mieux que le poisson_. But this artificial love on the
part of the editors has not contributed to the popularity of the author,
and the youthful poet has been overlaid by his erudite commentators.
Besides this disadvantage, Persius, when he is read at all, comes
immediately after Juvenal, and, as if to enhance the contrast, is
generally bound up with him; and the homeliness of his tropes, the
crabbedness of his dialogue, the roughness of his transitions repel the
young student, who finds the riddance of the historical and
archaeological work which Juvenal involves a poor compensation for the
lack of the large manner and the dazzling rhetoric of the great
declaimer. On the other hand, maturer scholars have been found to
reverse the popular verdict, and to say, with Mr. Simcox, that 'the shy,
youthful fervor of the dutiful boy, combined with the literary honesty
which kept Persius from writing any thing which was not a part of his
permanent consciousness, makes him improve upon every reading, which is
more than can be said of Juvenal, who writes as if he thought and felt
little in the intervals of writing.' But while it is easy to get tired
of Juvenal, it is not so easy to become enamored of Persius; and it must
be admitted that the pleasure is questionable. Yet, in spite of
M. Nisard, there is no real question about the utility of the study of
the poet, who illustrates by what he does not say even more than by what
he says the character of an age which is of supreme importance to the
historian. Even if we put the study on lower ground, we must admit that
Persius's title to a prominent position in the annals of Roman
literature is indefeasible. However desirable it may be to get rid of
him, an author who has left his impress on Rabelais and Ben Jonson, as
well as on Montaigne and Boileau-- an author whose poems have furnished
so many quotations to modern letters, can not be dismissed from the
necessities of a 'polite education' with a convenient sneer. Persius
deserves our attention, if it were only as a problem of literary taste.
To the end of the study of Persius, it is best to look away from the
conflicting views of the critics, and to abandon the attempt to
distinguish between the weight of facts and the momentum of rhetoric in
the balanced antitheses of praise and blame. The position of the poet
will be most accurately determined by the calculation of the statics of
his department and his age.
The Satire is the only extant form of Latin poetry that can lay claim to
a truly national origin; and the error into which the early historians
of classical literature were led by the resemblance between the name of
the Roman satire and the name of the Greek satyr-drama has long been
corrected. But the truth which this error involves, the connection
between the comic drama and the satire, remains. The satire goes back to
the popular source of comedy, and holds in solution all the elements
which the Greeks combined into various forms of dramatic merriment. As
the rhythmical movements, which culminate in such perfections as the
dactylic hexameter and the iambic trimeter, are common to our whole
race, and the rude Saturnian verse is one with the heroic, so the rustic
songs of harvest and vintage are common to Greece and Italy; and it is
no marvel that, as the satire was working itself out to classic
proportions, it should have felt its kindred to Greek comedy, and should
have drawn its materials and its methods from that literature on which
Roman literature in its other departments was more directly dependent.
And so the satire, though a genuine growth of Italian soil, was none the
less subject to Greek influences. It was trained into Greek forms, it
was permeated by Greek thought; and here as elsewhere the retranslation
into Greek, of which the older commentators were so fond, is often the
key to the meaning; here as elsewhere our appreciation of the author, as
a whole, is conditioned by our knowledge of Greek literature.
Horace, the master of Roman satire, has more than once drawn the
parallel between satire and comedy; and Persius, who follows the
literary, though not the philosophical creed of his predecessor, aims
even more distinctly than Horace does at reproducing the mimicry of
comedy on the narrow stage of the satire. At the close of the First
Satire he goes so far as to demand of his readers the intense study of
the Old Attic Comedy as the preparation for the enjoyment of his poems--
an extraordinary demand, if we do not make due allowance for the
rhetorical expression of high aims and earnest endeavors. A comparison
of the triumvirate of the _comoedia prisca_ of Attica reveals little
trace of direct influence, abundant evidence of extreme diversity in
expression and conception. I say 'expression,' not 'language.' It is
true that the language of Persius has a virile tone, but the masculine
energy of his words is often out of keeping with the scholastic tameness
of his thoughts. The breezy Pnyx of the Athenian and the stuffy
_lecticula lucubratoria_ of the Roman are not further apart than
Aristophanes and Persius.
The New Attic Comedy, the comedy of situation and manners, furnished
themes that lay nearer to the genius of Persius, although the grace of a
Menander was much further from his grasp than from Terence, the
half-Menander of Caesar's epigram. One passage is all but translated
from Menander's Eunuch; and if Persius did not borrow traits for his
picture of the miser and the spendthrift from the master of the New
Comedy, it was not for lack of models. Indeed, so unreal is Persius,
with all the realism of his language, that one of the most striking
features of his poems-- the opposition to the military-- loses somewhat
of its significance when we remember that the Macedonian period, to
which the New Comedy belongs, is crowded with typical soldiers of
fortune, with their coarse love of sensual pleasure-- their coarse
contempt of every thing that can not be eaten, drunk, or handled. Every
line of Persius's centurion can be reproduced from the Greek; and
although it would be going too far to say that there was no counterpart
to his sketch in his own experience, although, on the contrary, Persius
seems to have verified by actual observation whatever he learned from
books, the historical value of his portrait is very much reduced by the
existence of the Greek type. As a specimen of a kind of
clerico-political opposition to an empire which its enemies might call
an empire of brute force and military mechanism, the hostility of
Persius to a class whose predominance was making itself felt more and
more is not without its point and interest, and it is unfortunate that
we have to leave its reality in suspense.
Yet another form of the comic drama was the Mime, and we have the
explicit statement of Joannes Lydus that Persius imitated the famous
mimographer, Sophron; and although the fragments of Sophron are so
scanty that this statement can not be verified, it is not without its
intrinsic probability. The mimetic power of Sophron is notorious, and
Persius might well have taken lessons from the man whom Plato
acknowledged as his master. The dialogue, thus borrowed from the mime,
became the artistic form of philosophic composition, and, as Persius's
Satires are essentially moral treatises, it is not surprising that he
should have made large use of the same machinery. Plato himself
furnished the movement for two of his essays, and we can detect a
community of models between Persius and some of the later Greek writers.
Lucian, the mercurial, and Persius, the saturnine, often work on the
same theme, each in his way; and when the dialogue is dropped, and the
bustle of the drama is succeeded by the effects of the scene-painter's
craft, we are reminded of another group of copyists, and find all the
picturesque detail for which Persius is so famous in the letters of
Alkiphron and Aristainetos, themselves far-off echoes of the New Comedy.
Surely these are originals enough, the Attic Comedy, the Mime, Sophron
and Plato, Menander and Philemon. But we find other models nearer home,
and, passing by the reflections of Greek comedy in Plautus and Terence,
its refractions in Afranius and Pomponius, we come to the satiric
exemplars of Persius-- Lucilius and Horace. _Mox ut a scholis et
magistris divertit, lecto libro Lucilli decimo, vehementer saturas
conponere instituit._ This statement of the old _Vita Persii_ is much
more consonant with the character of Persius than his own affected
mirthfulness. His 'saucy spleen' had as little to do with his verse
writing as righteous indignation with the rhetorical outpouring of
Juvenal. His laughter was as much a part of the conventionalities of the
satire as the _Camena_ was of his confidences to Cornutus. School-boys
all imitate circus-riders; here and there one mimics the clown; and
Persius, who had not outgrown the tendencies of boyhood, straightway
began to make copies of verses in the manner of Lucilius. At the same
time he was too much under the influence of Horace to follow Lucilius in
his negligences, and too little master of the form to strike the mean
between slovenly dictation and painful composition. As an imitator of
Lucilius he boldly lashes men of straw where Lucilius flogged Lupus and
Mucius, and breaks his milk-teeth on Alkibiades and Dama where Lucilius
broke his jaw-teeth on living and moving enemies. As an imitator of
Horace he appropriates the garb of Horatian diction; but the easy
movement of roguish Flaccus is lost, and the stiff stride of the young
Stoic betrays him at every turn.
As in the case of the Old Attic Comedy, Persius's intellectual affinity
with Lucilius was purely imaginary; and for the purposes of this study
it is unnecessary to reproduce the lines of Horace's portrait of the
'great nursling of Aurunca,' or to attempt to form a mosaic out of the
chipped chips of Lucian Müller's recent collection. The wide range of
theme, the manly carelessness of style, the bold criticism, the bright
humor, the biting wit-- in short, almost every characteristic of
Lucilius that we can distinguish, shows how little kindred there must
have been between the two men. The dozen scattered verses of the Tenth
Book of Lucilius, which is said to have suggested the theme of the First
Satire of Persius, and the fragments of the Fourth Book, which is
imitated by Persius in his Third Satire, though more significant, give
us no clew to the manner or the extent of his indebtedness. Here and
there a verse, a hemistich, a jingle may have been taken from Lucilius,
and he may have enriched his vocabulary here and there from Lucilius's
store of drastic words; but his obligations to Lucilius, real and
imaginary, are all as nothing in comparison with the large drafts which
he drew on the treasury of Horace.
The obligations of Persius to Horace have been the theme of all the
editors. The scholiasts themselves have quoted parallels, and Casaubon
has written a special treatise on the subject, and commentators, with
almost childish rivalry, have vied with each other in noting verbal
coincidences and similar trains of thought. The fact of the imitation is
too evident to need proof, and it would have been much more profitable
to examine the causes and significance of this dependence, and to study
the modifications of the language and the thought as they passed through
the alembic of Persius's brain, than to multiply examples of words and
phrases that are common, not only to Horace and Persius, but to the
language of every-day life. Indeed, some go so far as to make Persius
quibble on Horace; and 'How green you are,' of the modern street, and
'What means that trump?' of the modern card-table, are as much
Shakespearian as some of Persius's 'borrowings' are Horatian.
Horace had long been a classic when Persius dodged his school-tasks and
was a dab at marbles. Indeed, nothing is more remarkable about Roman
literature than the rapidity with which the images of its Augustan
heroes took on the _patina_ of age. The half-century that lay between
Horace and Persius drew itself out to a distant perspective, and Virgil
and Horace had all the authority of _veteres_. They not only dictated
the forms of poetry, but permeated and dominated prose. True, the
hostility to Virgil and Horace had not ceased; the _antiquarii_ were not
dead; but the ground had been shifted. The admirers of republican poetry
in the time of Horace were republicans-- in the time of Persius they
were imperialists, and the maintenance of the authors of the Augustan
age as the true classics was a part of the programme of the opposition.
The court literature of the Neronian period found its models in the
earlier epic essays of Catullus rather than in the poems of Virgil.
Virgil had modified the Greek norms to suit the Latin tongue; but these
men went back of malice aforethought to the Greek standard, and emulated
the proportions of the Greek versification of the Alexandrian period.
They were impatient of the classic vocabulary, and found the classic
rhythms tame, and so they betook themselves to the earlier language and
set it to more exact harmonies. It was no heresy with this set to
consider Virgil at once light and rough. The mouth-filling words of the
older and bolder period, marshaled in serried ranks, no gap, no break,
as they kept time to a rhythmical cadence that was marked by all the
music of consonance and assonance-- this was the ideal of the school
which Persius assailed, just as an admirer of Pope or Goldsmith might
assail the dominant poetry of our day, with its sensuous melody and its
revived archaisms. Surely the worshippers of recent poets might pause
before accepting the narrow literary creed of Persius. But, not to
imitate the example of Nisard, and indulge in dangerous parallelisms, it
is sufficient for our purpose to note that Persius's close study of the
language of Horace was not only a part of a liberal education, but a
necessity of the school to which he belonged. If he was to write satire
at all, he must needs take Horace for his model. If he had written an
epic, he would have taken Virgil.
Besides this, we may boldly say that reminiscence is no robbery. The
verses, the phrases, the arguments that we know by heart often become so
wholly ours that they weave themselves unconsciously into the texture of
our speech. We use them as convenient forms of expression, without the
least thought of plagiarism. We quote them, thinking that they are as
familiar to others as they are to ourselves. They constitute, as it
were, a sympathetic medium between men of culture. And so Persius
repeated group after group of the words of Horace as innocently as the
Augustan poets translated their Greek models, and thought no more harm
than did the Emperor Julian when he Platonized, or Thackeray when he
transfused the classics that he learned at the Charter House into his
own matchless English. That he did it to excess is not to be denied. He
never learned the lesson of Apelles-- what is enough.
Having thus briefly disposed of those turns which are common to the
Latin tongue, and those which ran freely into the pen of the writer, we
have now to deal with a considerable number of passages in which the
memory of Persius must have lingered over the words of Horace, in which
his painstaking genius has hammered the thoughts of Horace into a more
compact or a more angular utterance. To the majority of readers his
condensations and his amplifications will alike appear to be so many
distortions of the original. So, notably, where he characterizes Horace
himself, and substitutes for the simple _naso adunco_ the puzzling
_excusso naso_, where 'the dreams of a sick man' become the 'dreams of a
sick dotard,' where 'telling straight from crooked' is twisted into
'discerning the straight line where it makes its way up between crooked
lines,' and where he wrings from the natural phrase 'drink in with the
ear' the odd combination 'bibulous ears.' In the longer passages the
wresting is still more pronounced; and those who refuse to take into
consideration the moral attitude of Persius may well wonder at the
perversity with which he distorts the lines and overcharges the colors
of the original. But it is tolerably evident that, with all Persius's
admiration of Horace as an artist, he felt himself immeasurably superior
to him morally, and looked upon these adaptations and alterations as so
much gained for the effect of his discourse. The slyness of Horace might
have answered well enough for his day and for the kind of vices that he
reproved, but the depth over which Persius stood gave him a more than
Stoic stature. Horace might have been content with a flute; nothing less
resonant than a trumpet would have suited the moral elevation of
Persius. Horace is a consummate artist, and not less an artist in the
conduct of his life than in the composition of his poems. Persius is the
prototype of the sensational preacher, and preachers of all centuries,
from Augustin and Jerome to Macleane and Merivale, have had a weakness
for him.
Aside from the moral tone, which is enough to give a different ring to
the most similar expressions in the two poets, there is an artistic
difference of great significance in the handling of the dramatic
element, which they both recognized as fundamental in the satire. The
dramatic satires of Horace will not bear dislocation without
destruction. In Persius the characters are always shifting, always
fading away into an impersonal _Tu_. This may be partly due to the
interval which he allowed to elapse between the periods of composition;
but it is possible that he recognized the limitation of his own powers,
that his satires were intended to be a knotted thong, and not a smooth
horsewhip. This piecemeal composition, be it the result of poverty or of
economy, makes Persius the very author for 'Elegant Extracts.' Hence it
is not hard to defend him, as it is not hard to defend Seneca, and on
similar grounds. Single verses ring in the ear for months and years.
What line, for instance, more quoted than
_Tecum habita: noris quam sit tibi curta supellex_?
What line sinks deeper than the sombre verse,
_Virtutem videant intabescantque relicta_?
Single scenes, whether of dialogue or of description, possess every
requirement of dramatic vividness. On every page of the commentary we
call him bookish, and yet his pictures stand out from the canvas with a
boldness which makes us concede that his books did not keep him from
seeing, if they did not teach him to see, what was going on around him.
What is not a little remarkable in so young a man is the honesty of his
painting. A home-keeping youth, Persius gives us living pictures of what
he saw at home, whether at Rome, at Volaterrae, or at Luna; in the
school-room, in the lecture-room, in the court of justice, on the wharf,
at the country cross-roads. He has watched the carpenter stretching his
line, the potter whirling his wheel, the physician adjusting his scales.
He has heard the horse-laugh of the burly centurion, and shivered; has
heard, with a young Stoic sneer, a cooing and mincing declaimer. He
knows all about ink and paper and parchment and reeds; he has not
outlived his knowledge of marbles, and one might fancy that the lustral
spittle of his aunty was still fresh on his brow. The fact that there is
no breeziness about his poems, nothing that tells us of the liberal air
beyond, is another sign of his truthfulness. His life is like his own
'ever retreating bay' of the Sixth Satire, with the cliffs of Stoic
philosophy between him and the wintry sea without. Arretium he knows--
it was not so far from Volaterrae-- and Bovillae, in the neighborhood of
which he had a farm, and Luna, and the world of Rome; but the rest of
his geography is in the inane. Horace, on the other hand, ambles all
over Italy, and treats us every now and then to a foreign tour with the
air of a man who had run across the sea in his time; and even if he who
takes us in his sweeping flight from Cadiz to Ganges be not the real
Juvenal, the undisputed Juvenal has a far wider geographical outlook
than Persius. This very limitation is one of the best signs of the
artistic worth of Persius, and justifies the regret that he had not made
himself the Crabbe of Roman poetry.
We have seen that Persius was not slavishly dependent on Horace,
assimilated the material that he derived from him, raised the worldly
wisdom of Horace to the ideal standard of the Stoic, and followed a
different canon of dramatic art. To this we may add that Persius, with a
certain aristocratic disdain of conventionalities, goes deeper into the
current of vulgar diction than the freedman's son dared. Persius felt
that he could afford to talk slang, and he talked it; and the
commentators have found it necessary to hold Petronius in the left hand,
as well as Horace in the right.
We now proceed to yet another formal element, which is no less
significant to the close student of antique literature. The Roman
handling of the hexameter was artificial in the extreme. Reasoning
backward from the Latin hexameter, scholars have been prone to transfer
the conscious symbolism of the Roman poets to the Greek originals; and
if they had stopped, say, at Apollonius Rhodius, they might have been
justified, for in the later Greek poets something of the sort is not to
be denied. But the healthier period of Greek poetic art was lifted far
above such toying adaptations of sound to sense as commentators still
discover in Homer when they enlarge on the symbolism of this or that
spondaic verse, the beauty of this or that combination of diaeresis and
caesura. A recent comparison of Homer with his successors has shown
that, of all the spondaic verses in Homer, scarcely one in a hundred can
be traced to any 'picturesque' motive, and the rapid movement of so many
five-dactyl hexameters is simply the normal pace of the verse. When we
come to Latin metres, however, we must take a different standard, and
recognize a conscious modification of the Greek rule. The Ovidian
pentameter of the best period-- to cite a familiar instance-- is subject
to minute laws, which are transgressed at every turn in Greek elegiac
poetry, and the different ideals of Persius and Horace are distinctly
traceable in their treatment of the hexameter. Horace, as is well known,
broke the lofty movement of the hexameter to suit the easy gait of the
satire. Persius is more rhetorical than Horace, and, although he admits
elision with as great freedom as his master, his verse has a more
mechanical structure than the verse of Horace, and many of the
conversational peculiarities of the Horatian hexameter are much less
conspicuous in Persius. Horace weakens the caesura, employs a great
number of spondaic words, and neglects the variety at which the epic
aims; and perhaps the trained ear of a determined scholar might hear in
the jog-trot of his satiric rhythms the hoofs of his bob-tailed mule and
the lazy flapping of his portmanteau. Persius, on the other hand,
hammers out his thoughts in a far more orthodox cadence. Comparing the
first six hundred and fifty verses of the first book of the satires of
Horace with the six hundred and fifty verses of Persius, we find that
more than eight per cent. have five spondees against less than five per
cent. in Persius. The so-called third trochee or feminine caesura of the
third foot is found in one of ten of Horace's hexameters, and only in
one of twenty-six in Persius-- a low proportion even for a Latin poet.
Still more striking is the rare use which Persius makes of the masculine
caesura of the sixth foot, with its consequent monosyllabic close. Aside
from all idle symbolism, this arrangement, which is comparatively common
in Horace, gives the verse a certain familiar roughness, especially
where the final word forces a union with the following line. These
diversities can not be accidents, and serve to show that, although
Persius might weave himself a garment from the dyed threads of Horatian
diction, he was not bold enough to wear the _discincta tunica_ of
Horace's Muse. But we must not forget to be just, and it is only fair to
add that such a garb would have been as inappropriate to his severe and
lofty, though narrow spirit, as the Coan vestments of Ovid's 'kept
goddess'-- if we may borrow the _déesse entretenue_ of Heinrich Heine.
A comparison of Persius with Juvenal-- a favorite theme with editors--
does not enter into the plan of this study. It suffices for our present
purpose to note that the practiced rhetorician of the time of Trajan
could not have shared Quintilian's admiration of his youthful
predecessor. The parallel passages which have been cited belong to the
common stock of satirical strokes or to the thesaurus of proverbial
phrases. Who can believe that Juvenal took _usque adeo_ from Persius, or
borrowed from him the familiar _rara avis_? There are three or four
touches in the Tenth Satire which recall some of the more striking
expressions of Persius; but Ribbeck's objections to the genuineness of
this sophistic declamation, if not convincing, are at least sufficiently
well founded to make us pause in citing them. In moral earnestness,
Persius is as far superior to Juvenal as he is inferior to him in the
rhetorical treatment of his themes; and so long as men will take into
consideration this moral element, which modern critics are prone to
eliminate from works of art, so long as they will say _pectus est quod
satiricum facit_ as well as _quod theologum_, Persius will command a
personal esteem which does not attach to the satires of Juvenal. The
ingenious theory of Boissier, that the great satirist of the Caesars was
a snubbed snob, brings out in still more striking contrast the figure of
Persius as the reserved provincial aristocrat, and may be worthy of a
more ample development than it has yet received. But Juvenal is a
dangerous theme. As M. Martha has admirably observed, Juvenal is an
author whose declamatory tone has infected his eulogists; and those who
are not carried away by an 'admiration which disfigures while it
exalts,' may readily be tempted into the opposite extreme. Let us turn,
then, to other matters which illustrate more directly the character of
our author's compositions. And first a word or two of Stoicism.
With the strong practical tendencies of the Romans, the only systems of
Greek philosophy that ever found large acceptance at Rome were the
Epicurean and the Stoic; and in the Stoic school the only doctrines that
commanded much attention were the ethic. The subtle dialectic of the
Stoics, of which we have some unjoyous specimens in Cicero's
philosophical compilations, was not congenial to the Roman mind; but the
Stoic creed was the creed of the nobler spirits of the imperial time.
Excluded from public life, or, at all events, from the satisfactory
exercise of public functions, the elect few took refuge in Stoic
philosophy.[1]
[Footnote 1: In this section of the Introduction I follow Zeller's
Essay on Marcus Aurelius (_Vorträge u. Abhandlungen_) so closely
that some special acknowledgment seems to be necessary.]
The object of Stoicism is by means of virtue and knowledge to make men
independent of all without them, and happy in that independence. It is a
pantheism: God revealed in every thing; God's law recognized in every
thing; God the substance from which every thing proceeds, to which every
thing returns; the Original Fire, from which every thing is born again.
God is the all-pervasive Spirit, Fate, Providence. Obedience to his
eternal laws constitutes virtue and happiness. Good and evil are to be
measured by this standard. All that brings us toward this is Good; all
that carries us away from it is Evil. Every thing else is indifferent.
In Grace or out of Grace, says the Christian; or, as Calvin expresses it
in his nervous language, _Qui Christum dimidium habere vult, totum
perdit_. In Virtue or out of Virtue, says the Stoic. There is nothing
between. The wise are perfectly wise; the foolish are totally foolish.
'There is not a half-ounce of rectitude in the fool.' The vicious man is
as mad as Orestes-- nay, madder.
The difference between human beings is slight. Alkibiades, the high-born
and the handsome, is no better than shriveled old Baukis, who makes her
livelihood by selling greens. All external distinctions sink into utter
insignificance by the side of this great contrast of knowledge and
ignorance into which virtue and vice are resolved.
All humanity is one people; all the world one state; its ruler the
Deity; its constitution the eternal law of the universe. The more
unconditionally a man submits to the guidance of this law, the more
exclusively he seeks his happiness in virtue, the more independent he
will be of all without him, the more contented in himself, and yet the
readier to enter into communion with others, and to do his duty to the
whole of which he is a part.
But it is to be observed that the Stoicism of Persius, like the Stoicism
of Marcus Antoninus, was of a softer, milder, more religious character
than that of Zeno and Chrysippus; and when the Stoic discourses on the
nothingness of all earthly things, the ills of life, man's moral
weakness, and his need of help, we hear language that reminds us now of
the epistles of the New Testament, now of the doctrines of Buddha. 'The
philosopher,' says Zeller, 'is a physician for the soul, a priest and
servant of the Deity among men, and this he shows by the most unlimited,
devoted, unreserved philanthropy.' And not only so, but the Stoic does
not disdain to make life brighter in the social circle; and the Sixth
Satire of our author, which Nisard considers to be a youthful escapade
of the poet-- _qui s'évertue comme un écolier qui sort de classe_-- is
no less truly Stoic than the high-strung Third.
In speaking of this subject it is difficult to keep from using the word
religion, for the emotional element, which is so characteristic of
religion, is not wanting in a system which is the popular synonym for
suppression of emotion. This is the thesis which M. Martha has brought
out into clear relief, and illumined by many apposite examples-- a
thesis which will not be strange to those who have studied with any care
the social aspects of the later life of antiquity. Under the empire
morality was more than morality-- it was a religion; and all the
formulae of certain phases of Christian ascetics may be applied to the
ethical side of Stoic philosophy. It is difficult to approach the
subject without seeming irreverence; but the faith of the Christian must
be far from robust who can shrink from a parallel that goes no farther
than the machinery-- that does not involve the motive power. It is not
the aim of this study to determine whether this parallelism is to be
recognized as a _praeparatio Evangelica_, or as the like result of
similar forces at work in different systems of thought and belief. It is
enough to present the parallelism, to excuse the phraseology.
Our ancestors, at all events, were not afraid to recognize 'natural
Christians' in such men as Socrates, in such youths as Persius. Why,
even Seneca figured for a long time as St. Seneca; and Jeremy Taylor was
following old example when he cited the Stoic as well as the Christian
code. It is only one step from the recognition of this spiritual kindred
to the recognition of the practical methods of spiritual work as
anticipated in the life of antiquity-- practical methods which for our
purposes are even better described by an unbeliever like Lucian than by
a believer like Marcus Antoninus. In that age of transition we find
father confessors, private chaplains, mendicant friars, missions,
revivals, conversions, ecstasies-- all showing the deep needs of the
human heart, which refused to be satisfied with the outworn gods of the
Pantheon, and, in ignorance of the divine Person, who alone can answer a
personal love, sought solace in the mechanism of morality. In
characterizing Cornutus, I have already borrowed a phrase from
M. Martha, and called him, as M. Martha calls Seneca, a spiritual
director; and I have already ventured to call Persius a sensational
preacher. His stock of philosophy or theology is not as large as some
commentators suppose; and all the elaborate attempts to show by the
satires that Persius was a thoroughly trained and consistent Stoic have
failed. The most elementary knowledge of Stoic ethics is sufficient for
the comprehension of Persius. Whatever else he knew he kept back for
practical considerations. He sticks to the marrow of morality, and
reiterates the cardinal doctrines of Stoicism with the vehemence of a
Poundtext. This vehemence, this enthusiasm, may be explained by his
youth, his Etruscan blood, his profession as a moral reformer. A critic
with M. Taine's resources might account for it by the climate of
Volaterrae; but, however it may be accounted for, certain it is that he
himself is much impressed with the profundity of the doctrines which he
professes; that he warms and glows as he imparts to his auditors the
great secret that they are not free because they are slaves to vice;
that a man who does not understand his relations to his Maker can not
move a finger without sinning; that in the flesh there is no good thing;
and that the anguish of a tortured conscience is the worst of hells. But
the difficulties of Persius are not due to recondite Stoic thought, and
can not be cleared up by reference to Stoic philosophy. The trouble lies
in the slangy expressions, the lack of organic development, the restless
zeal to force his message home to the heart of every hearer, and the
consequent shifting of the personages of his dialogue to suit the cases
as they rose before his mind.
Persius, then, was a preacher of Stoicism-- Stoicism, at once the
philosophy and the religion of a time when serious and noble natures had
no city of refuge except in their inmost selves, when the only possible
activity seemed to be submission to the inevitable. The hydrostatic
pressure of the imperial time forced all the better elements into this
mould; and in so far Persius bears the stamp of his period, and the very
absence of political and personal allusions shows how imperfect life
must have been. But one school of commentators, headed by Casaubon, and
represented to-day in Germany by Lehmann, in England by Pretor, see in
Persius much more than a disciple of the Stoa; and the satires of our
author-- especially the First and Fourth-- are supposed to be full of
more or less oblique references to Nero's person, his habits, his
literary pretensions, his aristocratic birth. At one time it seemed as
if this thesis, which was suggested by the scholiast, had been
abandoned, but the field for historical ingenuity is too tempting; and
one of the vaguest of all the satires, the Fifth, has been discovered by
Lehmann to be full of the most stinging allusions to Nero. It is not
enough to grant to this school that Nero, as the type of his age, may
have been present to the mind of the author. They scornfully reject this
concession, and resort to all manner of legerdemain in order to explain
away the impossibilities of such an attack and the improbabilities of
its execution. With such scope as these scholars allow themselves we may
find parallels every where, and covert assaults may be detected in the
most innocent literary performances. But it would not answer the purpose
of this Introduction to enter into an elaborate discussion of this
question, which seems to be destined to an uncomfortable resurrection as
often as it is laid. Every plausible coincidence has been mentioned in
the Notes, and it will be sufficient for ingenuous youth to know the
opinions of distinguished scholars on the subject.
If this essay had not been prolonged beyond the limit proposed, it might
be well to give some account of the grammatical and rhetorical
peculiarities of the style of Persius; but the grammar of Persius will
present few difficulties to those who are at all familiar with the
poetic syntax of the Latin language; and enough has been said to prepare
the student, in a measure, for coping with the labored terseness of our
author.
The manuscripts of Persius are remarkable for their age, their number,
and the stupid bewilderment of the transcribers. The best is the _Codex
Montepessulanus_, or Montpellier manuscript, with which the _Codex
Vaticanus_ closely coincides; but, in the words of Jahn, _Nullus Persii
codex tantae auctoritatis est ut in rebus dubiis eius vestigia tuto
sequaris sed semper inter complures optio eaque non raro incerta datur_.
* * * * *
A. PERSII FLACCI
SATURARUM
LIBER.
* * * * *
PROLOGUS.
Nec fonte labra prolui caballino,
nec in bicipiti somniasse Parnaso
memini, ut repente sic poeta prodirem.
Heliconidasque pallidamque Pirenen
illis remitto, quorum imagines lambunt 5
hederae sequaces: ipse semipaganus
ad sacra vatum carmen adfero nostrum.
quis expedivit psittaco suum chaere
picamque docuit nostra verba conari?
magister artis ingenique largitor 10
venter, negatas artifex sequi voces;
quod si dolosi spes refulserit nummi,
corvos poetas et poetridas picas
cantare credas Pegaseium nectar.
NOTES.
PROLOGUE.
ARGUMENT.-- I never drank of Hippocrene, never dreamed on Parnassus. The
maids of Helicon and the waters of Pirene are meat and drink for my
masters-- the acknowledged classics-- not for me, a poor lay-brother,
with my humble, homely song (1-7). Others succeed: the parrot with his
Greek, the pie with her Latin. They have not dreamed on Parnassus
either; but they have a teacher-- the great master Belly-- and Sixpence
is their Phoebus Apollo. Hark how they troll forth their notes! (8-14).
Alas for me! no golden Muse, no silver sixpence inspires me. _Quis leget
haec?_
This prologue is a survival of the dramatic element of the satire, as
Casaubon has remarked. Peculiarly personal, the prologue is found in the
earlier and in the later stages of art, in ballad literature and in
reflective poetry. The spurious verses which precede the Aeneid-- _Ille
ego_-- were intended to serve as a prologue, and prologues in prose and
poetry are familiar to the readers of Martial, Statius, Ausonius, and
Claudian.
There is no good reason to doubt the genuineness of the prologue, or to
attribute the authorship to Caesius Bassus, the Editor of Persius, as
Heinrich has done. Nor is there any sufficient ground for supposing that
the prologue is fragmentary. The two parts-- of seven verses each-- do
not hang well together, but the connection of the thought is not so
remote after all. 'In the former part, Persius ridicules the pretended
source of the poetical inspiration of his time, in the latter he exposes
its real origin' (Teuffel).
More open to debate is the relation of the prologue to the satires. Is
it an introduction to all, or only to the first? It is true that the
prologue seems to belong especially to the first. Both furnish us with a
programme of the poet's views, with a confession of faith which
consisted in a want of faith in the age; but as the First Satire itself
contains a vindication of the poet's work, and forms an introduction to
the other five satires, it is safer not to restrict the prologue to the
narrower office.
It is needless to say that these verses have not lacked admirers and
imitators. The latter half is parodied by Milton (_In Salmasii
Hundredam_), and the line _magister artis ingenique largitor_ is
expanded by Rabelais (4, 59).
The metre is the _scazon_ or _choliambus_ (G., 755; A., 82, 2, _a_, R),
and as the combination of different rhythms is one of the peculiarities
of the earlier _satura_, it is not unlikely that Persius followed an
older pattern. In Petronius, cap. 5, the choliambus is in like manner
followed by the hexameter, but the analogy is not close. The choliambus,
the invention of the great lampoonist Hipp[-o]nax, is admirably adapted
by its structure for the expression of disappointment, vexation,
discontent. The march of the iambus is suddenly checked in the fifth
foot, and the rapid measure violently tripped up. It is a mischievous
metre, and betrays in its malice the Thersitic character of its
inventor.
1. The allusion is to Ennius, the _alter Homerus_, who drank of
Hippocrene (Prop., 3, 2 [4], 6), and dreamed that he had seen his great
original on Parnassus (Cic., Ac. Pr., 2, 16, 51). --#fonte#: '_in_ the
spring.' The Latin Abl. often has a locative translation, when the
conception is not necessarily or not distinctly locative. (G.,[2] 387.)
--#prolui#: 'drenched' is designedly misused. The figure is _Litotes_.
(G., 448, R. 2.) The greater the depression, the greater the rebound.
_Non prolui labra_ = _ne primoribus quidem labris attigi_.
--#caballino#: _Fons caballinus_, 'hack's spring,' is a mock translation
of _Hippocrene_ = +hippou krênê+: the fountain opened by Pegasus with
his hoof. _Caballus_ is a comic equivalent of _equus_. Comp. Juvenal's
_Gorgonei #caballi#_ (3, 118).
[Footnote 2: G. = Gildersleeve's L. Grammar; A. = Allen and
Greenough's; M. = Madvig's.]
2. #bicipiti#: 'two-peaked.' Parnassus is called _biceps_, either
because it appears to have two peaks from such common points of view as
the entrance to the Corinthian Gulf (+dikorumbos ho Parnasos+, Lucian,
Char., 5), or because of the two tall cliffs (Ov., Met., 1, 316; 2,
221)-- the +Phaidriades+ of Diodorus (16, 28), the +dilophos petra+ of
Sophocles (Ant., 1126)-- between which the Castalian spring takes its
rise. --#somniasse#: sc. _me somniasse_ (G., 527, R. 2; M., 401). With
_memini_ the Pres. Inf. is more common of Personal Recollection (G.,
277, R; A., 58, 11, _b_), but the Perfect is also found when the action
is distinctly recognized as a by-gone. Comp. _saepe velut gemmas eius
signumque probarem_ | _per causam #memini# me #tetigisse# manum_, Tib.,
1, 6, 26. Also Ov., Am., 3, 7, 25-6; A. A., 2, 169. The Perfect is
especially appropriate here, as the balance of the period would seem to
require _nec prolui nec_ (_quod meminerim_) _somniavi_; and so Conington
with correct instinct translates, 'never that #I# can remember.'
3. #sic#: +houtôs+, 'just so,' 'without any warning, any preparation.'
--#prodirem#: 'make my appearance' (as it were on the stage).
4. #Heliconidas#: The Muses. Comp. Hesiod (Theog., 1). Hermann prefers
the epic form, _Heliconiadas_. --#-que# --#-que#: G., 478; A., 43, 2,
_a._ --#pallidamque Pirenen#: Pirene is the fountain of Acrocorinthus,
where Pegasus was broken in by Bellerophon. The poetic virtue of its
water was a late discovery. _Pallidam_, attribute for effect. Comp.
_pallida mors_, +chlôron deos+, and the like. The pallor of students and
poets needs no illustration.
5. #remitto#: +aphiêmi+, for the more usual _relinquo_, which is a
common v.l. Kisselius (_Specimen criticum_, p. 51) cites Cic., De Orat.,
1, 58: _tibi #remittunt# istam voluptatem et ea se carere patiuntur_;
and Tac., Hist., 4, 11: _vim principis complecti, nomen remittere_.
--#imagines#: 'busts' (set up in libraries, public and private). Comp.
_ut dignus venias hederis et imagine macra_, Juv., 7, 29. --#lambunt#:
more frequently used of flames.
6. #hederae#: Notice the plural, 'ivy wreaths,' G., 195, R. 6. The ivy,
being sacred to Bacchus, formed the wreath of victors in scenic
contests; thence transferred to poets generally. --#sequaces#: 'lissom,
pliant.' Persius seldom, if ever, uses a merely descriptive epithet, and
hence some commentators have detected a sneer in these words, 'lackeying
ivy belicks.' --#semipaganus#: 'poor half-brother of the guild'
(Conington). The _paganus_ is admitted to all the _sacra pagi_
(_paganalia_); the _semipaganus_ is a lay-brother. Persius is not a
_vates_, but a _semivates_. He is not initiated into what Aristophanes
calls the +gennaiôn orgia Mousôn+, Ran., 356. Those who believe that the
Satires of Persius were aimed at Nero, see in _semipaganus_,
'half-educated,' as well as in the last seven verses, a deliberate
disguise of the poet's real condition, as a man of culture and of
wealth. They overlook the sneer at the class which he is not worthy to
join.
7. #vatum#: with the same tone of derision as in the English equivalent,
'bards.' --#nostrum#: perhaps not simply = _meum_, but 'native,
home-made.'
8. #expedivit#: _Expedire_ and _conari_ both imply difficulty (Jahn),
but the difficulty is completely conquered in _expedire_; not so in
_conari_. The parrot, if not a Greek (+psittakos+), is a Hellenized
Hindoo (_bitak_), and has learned to utter glibly his familiar
_Bonjour_. The magpie is an Italian, and not so deft. Others regard this
interpretation, which is essentially Jahn's, as too subtle, and make
_verba nostra_, which many prefer to _nostra verba_, simply equivalent
to 'human speech.' --#chaere# = +chaire+. Greek was the language of
small talk, love talk, parrot-talk.
10. #magister artis ingenique largitor#: _Magister_, of that which is
taught; _largitor_, of that which comes from nature's bounty; _-que_
combines the two into an exhaustive unit (G., 478; A., 43, 3, _a_). The
thought recurs in numberless forms. Comp. +ha penia, Diophante, mona tas
technas egeirei+, Theocr., 21, 1; _Paupertas omnes artis perdocet_,
Plaut., Stich., 1, 3. 23 (Jahn). Add +chreia didaskei, kan bradus tis ê,
sophon+, Eur., fr. 709 (Nauck), and Alexis, fr. 205 (3, 479 Mein.),
where the +gastêr+ is expressly mentioned. Birds, it seems, were trained
to talk by hunger.
11. #negatas#: (_a natura_). --#artifex sequi#: poetic syntax for _a.
sequendi_. G., 424, R. 4. (comp. 429, R. 4); A., 57, 8, _f_, 3.
A so-called Greek construction. See 1, 59. 70. 118; 5, 15. 24; 6, 6. 24.
--#sequi# = _sectari_. --#voces#: (articulate) 'speech.'
12. #quod si#: 'Nay, if but.' Commentators on Horace still indulge in
remarks on the unpoetical character of _quod si_, copying Orelli on Od.,
1, 1, 35. If _quod si_ is prosaic, Propertius is to be pitied; he uses
it at every turn. --#dolosi#: 'seductive, alluring.' Persius does not
deal much in 'general epithets;' hence +dolion kerdos+ (Pind., Pyth., 4,
140) is not a sufficient parallel. --#refulserit#: better every way than
_refulgeat_, which Jahn accepts in his ed. of 1868. The Perf. Subj. is
more vivid and more correct than the Present. _Re-_ must not be
overlooked. Like the English 'again,' it denotes the reversal of a
previous condition. _Refulgere_, 'to catch the eye by its glitter,' 'to
flash on the sight'-- whereas it lay unnoticed before. --#nummi#: better
translated as a coin. Comp. 'The Splendid Shilling,' 'The Almighty
Dollar;' perhaps 'The Magic Sixpence.' Comp. Juv., 7, 8: _nam si Pieria
#quadrans# tibi nullus in umbra | ostendatur_, etc.
13. #corvos poetas et poetridas picas#: 'Raven poets and poetess pies,'
the substantive standing for an epithet, like _popa venter_, 6, 74.
Which of the substantives is adjective to the other does not appear. For
the _corvus_, Poe and Dickens will answer as well as Macrob., Sat. 2, 4.
The male poet has a female counterpart in the magpie (_pica_). According
to Ov. (Met., 5, 294, foll.), the daughters of Pierus, the Macedonian,
were changed into magpies because they had challenged the Muses to a
contest, and reviled the victorious goddesses. There seems to be an
allusion to the literary ladies of the day, the blue-stockings of
Juvenal's Satire (6, 434 foll.). See Friedländer, _Sittengeschichte_, 1,
481. _Poetridas_ after Gr. analogy.
14. #cantare nectar#: a poetic extension of the cognate accusative =
_nectareum carmen cantare_ (G., 331; A., 52, 1, _b_). _Nectar_ is copied
from Pind., Ol., 7, 7 (+nektar chuton, Moisan dosin+), and when combined
with _Pegaseium_ is sufficiently grandiloquent to be as absurd as it is
intended to be. The old reading, _melos_ (+melos+), with its faulty
quantity, rarely finds a champion against _nectar_.
CRITICAL APPENDIX.
PROLOGUS.
2. #Parnaso#: Parnasso, H. --4. #Heliconidas#: Heliconiadas, J{a}., H.
--5. #remitto#: relinquo, J{a}. --7. #adfero#: affero, J{a}., H.
--8. #chaere#: +chaire+, J{a}., H. --9. #picam#: picas, J{a}. --#nostra
verba#: verba nostra, H. --12. #refulserit#: J{a}.; refulgeat, J{w}., H.
* * * * *
SATURA I.
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. non, si quid turbida Roma 5
elevet, accedas examenque inprobum in illa
castiges trutina, nec te quaesiveris extra.
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, 10
cum sapimus patruos; tunc, tunc, ignoscite-- 'Nolo.'
Quid faciam? sed sum petulanti splene cachinno.
Scribimus inclusi, numeros ille, his pede liber,
grande aliquid, quod pulmo animae praelargus anhelet.
scilicet haec populo pexusque togaque recenti 15
et natalicia tandem cum sardonyche albus
sede leges celsa, liquido cum plasmate guttur
mobile collueris, patranti fractus ocello.
hic neque more probo videas nec voce serena
ingentis trepidare Titos, cum carmina lumbum 20
intrant, et tremulo scalpuntur ubi intima versu.
tun, vetule, auriculis alienis colligis escas?
auriculis, quibus et dicas cute perditus _ohe_.
'Quo didicisse, nisi hoc fermentum et quae semel intus
innata est rupto iecore exierit caprificus?' 25
En pallor seniumque! o mores! usque adeone
scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter?
'At pulchrum est digito monstrari et dicier _hic est!_
ten cirratorum centum dictata fuisse
pro nihilo pendas?' Ecce inter pocula quaerunt 30
Romulidae saturi, quid dia poemata narrent.
hic aliquis, cui circa umeros hyacinthia laena est,
rancidulum quiddam balba de nare locutus,
Phyllidas Hypsipylas, vatum et plorabile si quid,
eliquat ac tenero supplantat verba palato. 35
adsensere viri: nunc non cinis ille poetae
felix? non levior cippus nunc inprimit ossa?
laudant convivae: nunc non e manibus illis,
nunc non e tumulo fortunataque favilla
nascentur violae? 'Rides' ait 'et nimis uncis 40
naribus indulges. an erit qui velle recuset
os populi meruisse et cedro digna locutus
linquere nec scombros metuentia carmina nec tus?'
Quisquis es, o, modo quem ex adverso dicere feci,
non ego cum scribo, si forte quid aptius exit, 45
quando haec rara avis est, si quid tamen aptius exit,
laudari metuam, neque enim mihi cornea fibra est;
sed recti finemque extremumque esse recuso
euge tuum et belle. nam belle hoc excute totum:
quid non intus habet? non hic est Ilias Atti 50
ebria veratro? non si qua elegidia crudi
dictarunt proceres? non quidquid denique lectis
scribitur in citreis? calidum seis ponere sumen,
scis comitem horridulum trita donare lacerna,
et 'verum' inquis 'amo: verum mihi dicite de me.' 55
qui pote? vis dicam? nugaris, cum tibi, calve,
pinguis aqualiculus protenso sesquipede exstet.
o Iane, a tergo quem nulla ciconia pinsit,
nec manus auriculas imitari mobilis albas,
nec linguae, quantum, sitiat canis Apula, tantae! 60
vos, o patricius sanguis, quos vivere fas est
occipiti caeco, posticae occurrite sannae!
Quis populi sermo est? quis enim, nisi carmina molli
nunc demum numero fluere, ut per leve severos
effundat iunctura unguis? scit tendere versum 65
non secus ac si oculo rubricam derigat uno.
sive opus in mores, in luxum, in prandia regum
dicere, res grandis nostro dat Musa poetae.
ecce modo heroas sensus adferre videmus
nugari solitos graece, nec ponere lucum 70
artifices nec rus saturum laudare, ubi corbes
et focus et porci et fumosa Palilia faeno,
unde Remus, sulcoque terens dentalia, Quinti,
cum trepida ante boves dictatorem induit uxor
et tua aratra domum lictor tulit-- euge poeta! 75
est nunc Brisaei quem venosus liber Acci,
sunt quos Pacuviusque et verrucosa moretur
Antiopa, aerumnis cor luctificabile fulta.
hos pueris monitus patres infundere lippos
cum videas, quaerisne, unde haec sartago loquendi 80
venerit in linguas, unde istuc dedecus, in quo
trossulus exsultat tibi per subsellia levis?
nilne pudet capiti non posse pericula cano
pellere, quin tepidum hoc optes audire _decenter_?
'Fur es' ait Pedio. Pedius quid? crimina rasis 85
librat in antithetis: doctas posuisse figuras
laudatur 'bellum hoc!' hoc bellum? an, Romule, ceves?
men moveat? quippe et, cantet si naufragus, assem
protulerim. cantas, cum fracta te in trabe pictum
ex umero portes? verum, nec nocte paratum 90
plorabit, qui me volet incurvasse querela.
'Sed numeris decor est et iunctura addita crudis.
cludere sic versum didicit _Berecyntius Attis_
et _qui caeruleum dirimebat Nerea delphin_
sic _costam longo subduximus Appennino_. 95
_Arma virum_, nonne hoc spumosum et cortice pingui,
ut ramale vetus vegrandi subere coctum?'
'Quidnam igitur tenerum et laxa cervice legendum?
_Torva mimalloneis inplerunt cornua bombis,_
_et raptum vitulo caput ablatura superbo_ 100
_Bassaris et lyncem Maenas flexura corymbis_
_euhion ingeminat, reparabilis adsonat echo?'_
haec fierent, si testiculi vena ulla paterni
viveret in nobis? summa delumbe saliva
hoc natat in labris, et in udo est Maenas et Attis, 105
nec pluteum caedit, nec demorsos sapit unguis.
'Sed quid opus teneras mordaci radere vero
auriculas? vide sis, ne maiorum tibi forte
limina frigescant: sonat hic de nare canina
littera.' Per me equidem sint omnia protinus alba; 110
nil moror. euge! omnes, omnes bene mirae eritis res.
hoc iuvat? 'hic' inquis 'veto quisquam faxit oletum.'
pinge duos anguis: pueri, sacer est locus, extra
meite! discedo. secuit Lucilius urbem,
te Lupe, te Muci, et genuinum fregit in illis; 115
omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico
tangit et admissus circum praecordia ludit,
callidus excusso populum suspendere naso:
men muttire nefas? nec clam, nec cum scrobe? nusquam?
hic tamen infodiam. vidi, vidi ipse, libelle: 120
auriculas asini quis non habet? hoc ego opertum,
hoc ridere meum, tam nil, nulla tibi vendo
Iliade. audaci quicumque adflate Cratino
iratum Eupolidem praegrandi cum sene palles,
aspice et haec, si forte aliquid decoctius audis. 125
inde vaporata lector mihi ferveat aure:
non hic, qui in crepidas Graiorum ludere gestit
sordidus, et lusco qui possit dicere 'lusce,'
sese aliquem credens, Italo quod honore supinus
fregerit heminas Arreti aedilis iniquas; 130
nec qui abaco numeros et secto in pulvere metas
scit risisse vafer, multum gaudere paratus,
si cynico barbam petulans nonaria vellat.
his mane edictum, post prandia Calliroen do.
NOTES.
FIRST SATIRE.
This Satire is an attack on the literature of the day as the
efflorescence of the corruption of the times. The age is personified by
a critical friend, but it is not always easy to determine when the poet
is speaking and when the friend, or when the satirist is meeting an
imaginary objection from some other imaginary quarter. The unreality of
the whole dialogue is confessed with more candor than art in v. 44.
Instead of a firm outline, we have a floating _quisquis es_.
ARGUMENT.-- The poem opens with a line, which Persius recites to his man
of straw, who forthwith urges him to abandon authorship (1-3). The poet
acknowledges that he is at odds with his generation and expects no
applause at their hands. But little does he care for their praise; let
them prefer a Labeo to him. Their standard is not his standard. He is
his own canon. He will not, can not follow the advice of his friend. He
must obey the impulse of his temper and speak out (4-12).
Whether we write laborious verse or laborious prose-- so the attack
begins-- it is all one; display and applause are the aim and object of
both. The style is fustian; the delivery wanton; the theme prurient. The
bard is little better than a bawd (13-23). And yet so deeply rooted is
this love of praise that learning is loss, unless it be minted into
golden opinions, and knowledge is naught until it be known of men. To be
pointed out as a lion, to be used as a school classic-- what glory!
(24-30). Oh, yes! A glory shared by the dainty ditties, the mewling
elegies of lisping, snuffling dandies, for this is what calls forth the
approval of the after-dinner circle. Such is the praise that is to bless
the poet even after death! (30-40). It is true that fame is not to be
despised. No poet but feels his heart vibrate to praise. But the popular
acclaim is not the ultimate standard. Mad epics, elegies thrown off in a
surfeit, effusions of aristocratic easy-chairs are alike lauded. A man
feeds the hungry and clothes the naked, and then asks for a candid
opinion. Mockery of criticism! (40-62). The taste of the people relishes
nothing but smooth verses-- verses without flaw or break, faultless
machine-verses-- which answer any turn, and serve alike for satire, for
eclogues, for heroic strains (63-75). Others, again, call themselves
passionate pilgrims to the well of Latin undefiled, and linger over the
obsolete magniloquence of Pacuvius and Accius. A fine _olla podrida_--
this jumble of modern affectation and ancient trumpery (76-82). Bad as
this is in literature, how much worse it is to find that the jargon of
the _salon_ has become the language of the courts, and that the manly
Roman speech is dead. Even in a matter of life and death, the accused
thinks more of his rhetorical than of his judicial sentence, and listens
for a 'Pretty good,' as if that were the verdict (83-91). It will not do
to say that great improvements have been made in the art of verse.
Smooth are the verses and resonant, but at the cost of sense, of manly
vigor. Once catch the trick, and any body can reel off such lines
(92-106). Ears are ticklish, our satirist admits. Truth is an unwelcome
rasp, and the cold shoulder of great men no toothsome meal. Police
regulations are stringent. 'Commit no nuisance' is posted every where.
Ah, well! It was otherwise in the time of Lucilius. That was a free
world in which he craunched Lupus and Mucius. It was otherwise in the
time of Horace. That was a gay world, in which he tickled while he
taught. And is the poet not to mutter even? King Midas's barber told his
master's secret to a ditch. Where can a ditch be found? Here in this
book (107-121). Few readers can our author hope or desire-- only such as
have studied closely the great masters of the Attic sock, not such as
ignorantly make a mock of Greek attire and Greek science, pride
themselves on petty local honors, and rise to no higher conception of
wit or fun than a dog-fight or a jibe at personal infirmity (122-134).
It has been well observed that this is the only Satire of Persius in the
strict sense of the term; the other five have rather the character of
essays on moral themes.
One of the best commentaries on this poem is the famous 114th Epistle of
Seneca.
The student of English literature will remember that Gifford's Baviad is
an imitation of this piece.
1-7. At the very outset we encounter a difficulty in the distribution of
the first lines between P. (Persius) and M. (Monitor, as the second
interlocutor is usually called). The arrangement followed in the text
may be explained thus:
P. (_is discovered absorbed in contemplation. He recites a line from his
projected poem_).-- 'Vanity of vanities!'
M.-- Who will read this stuff of yours?
P. (_wakes up_).-- Do you mean that for me? Why, no one, of course.
M.-- No one?
P.-- Next to no one.
M.-- A lame and impotent conclusion!
P.-- Why so? Am I to fear that Polydamas and the Trojan dames shall make
up their minds to give Labeo the preference over me? Stuff! Don't
assent, when muddled Rome rejects a thing as light weight, and do not
trouble yourself to get the faulty tongue of that pair of scales to work
right, and look not outside of yourself for what you can find only
within yourself.
1. #O curas hominum! O quantum est in rebus inane!# _Homines_ and _res_
are both used for 'the world,' sometimes singly, sometimes together.
_Res_ is often to be omitted in translation, or another turn given.
_O quantum est in rebus inane_, 'Vanity of vanities'-- a suitable Stoic
text. There seems to be no allusion to Lucretius's common phrase, _in
rebus inane_.
2. #Quis leget haec?# a quotation from Lucilius, according to the
scholiast. Jahn follows Pinzger in supposing that the quotation begins
with _O curas hominum!_ See, however, L. Müller, _Lucilius_, p. 194.
3. #vel duo vel nemo#: is more guarded, and hence (by Litotes) stronger
than _nemo_. Comp. Gr. +ê tis ê oudeis+.
4. #ne mihi praetulerint#: an elliptical sentence, such as we often find
in final relations (A., 70, 3, _f_), in English as well as in Latin (G.,
688, R.). The sequence is not common in the classic period, but see G.,
512, R. Comp. Plaut., Aul., 2, 3, 11; Liv., 44, 22, and Weissenborn in
loc. The Greek would be: +mê protimêsôsi+. --#Polydamas#: Some write
_Pulydamas_, corresponding with the Homeric form, +Pouludamas+; but
_P[-o]lydamas_ (+Pôludamas+) is the Sicilian Doric, like _p[-o]lypus_
(+pôlupos+). The allusion is to a familiar passage in Hom., Il., 22,
100. 104. 5: +Pouludamas moi prôtos elencheiên anathêsei-- nun d' epei
ôlesa laon atasthaliêsin emêsin | aideomai Trôas kai Trôadas
helkesipeplous+. These are the words of Hector, as he steels his great
heart to meet Achilles. Polydamas is the counsellor who had urged him
(18, 254) to withdraw the Trojans into Troy, and Hector is ashamed to
turn back and encounter the rebuke of Polydamas and the reproaches of
his people. Persius uses Polydamas as the type of the Roman critic, and
by a familiar satiric stroke leaves out the Trojan men, as if they were
no men in Rome. Others understand 'Nero and his effeminate court.' The
Homeric passage had been well worn by Aristotle and Cicero (Att., 2, 5,
1; 7, 1, 4; 8, 16, 2) before it came to Persius. There is perhaps a
side-thrust at the pride of the old Roman families in their Trojan
descent. Comp. Juv., 1, 100: _iubet a praecone vocari | ipsos
#Troiugenas#_; also 8, 181. See Friedländer, _Sittengesch_., 1, 230.
--#Labeonem#: the Attius (Labeo) of v. 50, an unfortunate translator of
Homer, who stuck close to the letter. The scholiast has preserved a
line. +Ômon bebrôthois Priamon Priamoio te paidas+ (Il., 4, 35) is
rendered thus: _crudum manduces Priamum Priamique pisinnos_. 'Raw you'd
munch both Priam himself and Priam's papooses.'
5. #nugae#: The accusative is more common. Comp. G., 340, R. 1. --#non
accedas-- nec quaesiveris#: _Non_ and _nec_, where Quintilian's rigid
rule (1, 5, 50) requires _ne_ and _neve_. G., 266, R. 1; A., 41, 2, _e_.
Comp. 3, 73 and 5, 45. --#turbida#: 'muddle-headed' (Conington). But
comp. _Alexandrea turbida_, Auson., Clar. Urb., 3, 4.
6, 7. #elevet#: 'reject as light.' The figure is taken from weighing,
doubtless a common trope in the schools. --#examen#: (_filum, ligula_)
is the 'index, tongue, or needle' which is said to be _inprobum_,
'faulty,' 'wilful,' 'untoward,' because it does not move freely or
accurately on its pivot. --#trutina#: (Gr. +trutanê+, a word of doubtful
etymology and loose application, means here 'a balance,' 'a pair of
scales,' not, as the scholiast says, the _foramen_, 'fork' or 'cheeks,'
in which the _examen_ plays. --#castiges# = _percutias_ (Schol.) of the
tap given to a hitching balance. Gesner, s.v., regards _castigare_ here
as equivalent to _conpescere_ (5, 100), a view which has a good deal in
its favor. The notion is not 'do not correct the popular standard,' but
'do not try to get an exact result by the popular standard (for your
guidance).' Hermann (_Lect. Pers._, II., 9) follows those who understand
the _examen_ and _trutina_ of different instruments: _Noli examen tuum
in #populi# trutina castigare._[3] So Pretor, who translates: 'Do not
try to correct the erring tongue of your delicate balance by applying to
it a pair of ordinary scales.' --#nec te quaesiveris extra#: (_te_) 'Nor
look for yourself (what you can find only in yourself) outside of
yourself.' 'Be your own norm.' Others arrange: _nec quaesiveris extra
te_, 'Nor ask any opinion but your own.'
[Footnote 3: No satisfactory treatment of this subject is
accessible to me. The Greek and Latin dictionaries are wildly at
variance with one another and with the authorities. _Examen_ seems
to have been originally the strap by which the beam was suspended--
not from AG, but from AP. See Isidor., Orig., 16, 23, and comp.
_amentum_ (_ammentum_). Add Lucil., 16, 14 (L. Müller).
Eustathius's +trutanê epi zogou hê teiromenê tô barei tôn ogkôn+
points to the pivot (knife-edge) as the first meaning of _trutina_.]
8-12. The distribution followed is that of Jahn (1843), which gives
_nolo_ (v. 11) to the interlocutor. The jerky, self-interrupting
discourse is supposed to be characteristic of the _petulante splene
cachinno_. 'What is the use of consulting Rome? Every body there is an--
If I might say what! If I might? Surely I may, when I consider how old
we are become, how grum we are, and all the step-fatherly manner of our
lives, since the days of "commoneys" and "alley tors." Indulge me. _It
can not be._ What am I to do? Nothing? But I am a man of laughter with a
saucy spleen.'
8. #nam Romae quis non?# The suppressed predicate is to be supplied from
the general scope of the passage. The sentence is not completed in v.
131 (_auriculas asini habet_), for the simple reason that Persius did
not write _quis non_ in that passage, but _Mida rex_.
9. #cum--aspexi#: _Cum_ is equivalent to _postquam_ here. G., 567; A.,
62, 3, _e_. --#canitiem#: 'premature old age,' 'loss of youthful
freshness.' All through this satire the poet lashes old age, as
commentators have observed. So here, and 22. 26. 56. 79. The 'hoary
head' is not a 'crown of glory,' but a sign of debauchery; the 'fair,
round belly,' which is not uncomely in the elderly justice, is nothing
but a swagging paunch; the bald pate is not a mirror of honor, but a
mirror of dishonor; in short, 'no fool like an old fool.' Especially
severe is Persius on the 'used-up' man; and the affected moralizing of
young men, who had outlived their youth before they had had time to
forget the games of boyhood, drove him to satire. On the Neronian
hypothesis, Persius is endeavoring to masquerade as an old man.
--#nostrum istud vivere triste#: 'sour way of life.' This is a so-called
_figura Graeca_, which out-Greeks the Greeks. Good authors are very
cautious in adding an attribute to the infinitive, and do not go beyond
_ipsum, hoc ipsum_. _Scire tuum_, v. 27; _ridere meum_, v. 122; _velle
suum_, 5, 53; _sapere nostrum_, 6, 38, can not be rendered literally
into the language from which they are supposed to be imitated. Nursery
infinitives (3, 17) belong to a different category.
10. #nucibus#: The modern equivalent is 'marbles.' The very games
survive. (See 3, 50.) It is hardly necessary to prove that putting away
such childish things means becoming a man. _Da nuces pueris, iners |
concubine: satis diu | lusisti nucibus_, Catull., 61, 127-9.
11. #patruos#: On the accusative, see G., 329, R. 1; A., 52, 1, _c._ The
_patruorum rigor_ was proverbial. Owing to the legal position of the
paternal uncle, who was often the guardian, it is the _patruus_, not the
_avunculus_, who is the type of severity. So the cruel uncle of the
ballad of the 'children in the wood' is the father's brother.
12. #quid faciam?# G., 258; A., 57, 6. --#sed#: (I know you want me to
do nothing), 'but' (I can't keep quiet) 'I am a laugher born.'
--#petulante#: literally, 'given to butting,' hence 'saucy' --#splene#:
The seat of laughter. --#cachinno#: a substantive, perhaps built by
Persius on the analogy of _bibo_, _epulo_, _erro_, etc. Comp. _glutto_,
5, 112; _palpo_, 5, 176. Hermann, following Heindorf, makes _cachinno_
a verb, and reads: _tunc, tunc-- ignoscite, nolo; quid faciam sed sum
petulante splene-- cachinno_, 'Then-- then-- excuse me-- I would rather
not-- what am I to do?-- I can't help it-- my spleen is too much for
me-- I must have my laugh.' Jahn (1868) accepts _tunc, tunc-- ignoscite,
nolo_, but goes no further.
13-23. The battery opens. Verse-wright and writer of prose alike care
for nothing except applause. Follows a vivid picture of a popular
recitation.
13. #Scribimus inclusi#: Comp. _scribimus indocti_, etc. Hor., Ep., 2,
1, 117. --#inclusi#: 'in closet pent' (Gifford's Baviad), to show the
artificial and labored character of the composition in contrast with the
beggarly result. Markland's ingenious conjecture, _inclusus numeris_, is
not necessary. Heinr. admires Markl., but retains _numeros_ as a Greek
accusative! --#numeros#: 'poetry;' #pede liber# = _pede libero_,
'foot-loose,' 'prose,' _soluta oratio_.
14. #grande#: 'vast,' 'grandiose.' _Grandis_ is always used with
intention, which our word 'grand' sometimes fails to give. See 1, 68; 2,
42; 3, 45. 55; 5, 7. 186; 6, 22. --#quod pulmo#: 'something vast enough
to make a lung generous of breath pant in the utterance of it.' Jahn
(1868) reads _quo_ for _quod; quo_ is not so vigorous. --#animae
praelargus#: a stretch of the adjectives of fulness (G., 373, R. 6; A.,
50, 3, _b_); _praelargus = capacissimus._
15. #scilicet#: Ironical sympathy, 'O yes!' --#haec#: The position is
emphatic. --#populo#: 'to the public,' 'in public.' The political force
of _populus_ has ceased. --#pexus#: 'with hair and beard well dress'd.'
'Combed' hardly conveys the notion: say 'shampooed.' --#togaque
recenti#: 'fresh' (from the fuller).
16. #natalicia sardonyche#: Jewelry reserved for great occasions. The
brilliancy of the sardonyx is a common theme. _Rufe vides ilium
subsellia prima tenentem | cuius et hinc lucet sardonychata manus_,
Mart., 2, 29, 1-2 --#tandem#: shows impatience. --#albus# = _albatus_
(comp. 2, 40; Hor., Sat., 2, 2, 61) on account of the _toga recens_. So
_niveos ad frena Quirites_, Juv., 10, 45. Heinr. argues at length in
favor of 'pale.'
17. #sede celsa# = _ex cathedra_. --#leges#: So Jahn (1868), despite the
MSS. _Legens_ may be explained at a pinch as _lecturus_, a comma being
put after _ocello_; Hermann combines with _pulmo_, and comp. Juv., 10,
238 sq., where _os_ stands for the owner of the same. Add _cana gula_,
Juv., 14, 10. But _pexus_ and _albus_ make such a synecdoche incredible.
--#liquido#: _quia liquidam vocem efficit._ Comp. Hor., Od., 1, 24, 3:
_cui liquidam pater | vocem cum cithara dedit_. The attribute is put for
the effect, as in _pallidam Pirenen_, Prol., 4. --#plasmate#: according
to Quint., 1, 8, 2, a technical name for the professional training of
the voice, a kind of rhetorical _solfeggio_. Others understand the
_plasma_ of a gargle to clear the throat.
18. #mobile collueris#: _Mobile_ is predicative. Translate: 'after
gargling your throat to suppleness by filtering modulation.' --#patranti
ocello#: 'an eye that would be doing,' 'a leering, lustful eye.' Quint.
(8, 3, 44) says of _patrare: mala consuetudine in obscenum intellectum
sermo detortus_. Comp. 'do' in Shaksp., Troil. and Cressida, 4, 2: Go
hang yourself, you naughty, mocking uncle! You bring me to _do_, and
then you flout me too. --#fractus# = _effeminatus_, 'debauched,'
'languishing,' _+kladaros+._ Conington translates: 'with a languishing
roll of your wanton eye.'
19. #neque more probo nec voce serena#: Litotes. See Prol., 1.
20. #ingentis Titos#: Comp. _celsi Rhamnes_, Hor., A. P., 342. Here,
however, there is a reference to size of body (like _ingens Pulfennius_,
5, 190; _torosa iuventus_, 3, 86; _caloni alto_, 5, 95), for which
Persius seems to have had a Stoic contempt. _Titi_, perhaps another form
of _Tities_, the old Sabine nobility (Mommsen, _Rom. Gesch._, B. 1,
K. 4), of whom much aristocratic virtue might have been expected
(_sanctos licet horrida mores | tradiderit domus ac veteres imitata
#Sabinos#_, Juv., 10, 298-9). Instead of that we have great, hulking
debauchees. --#trepidare#: 'quiver.' The word is used indifferently of
pleasant and unpleasant agitation. The quavering measure thrills them so
that they can not sit still. On the infinitive, see 3, 64.
21. #scalpuntur intima#: 'their marrow is tickled.' _Scalpere_ is
opposed to _radere_, 1, 107. Comp. 3, 114; 5, 15.
22. #tun#: _-ne_ is often found in rhetorical questions. --#vetule#:
'you old reprobate,' 'you old sinner.' --#escas#: 'tidbits;' '_escas
colligere_,' 'cater.'
23. #quibus et dicas#: _Et_ belongs to _cute perditus_, which is
variously explained 'dropsical,' 'unblushing,' 'thoroughly diseased.'
The context requires a tough subject, and 'hide-bound' or
'case-hardened' might answer as a rendering. --#ohe#: a reminiscence of
Hor., Sat. 2, 5, 96: _importunus amat laudari; donec '#Ohe iam#' | ad
caelum manibus sublatis dixerit, urge, | crescentem tumidis infla
sermonibus utrem_, which last line helps us to understand _cute
perditus_. Persius, as is his wont, tries to improve on Horace, and
makes his man inelastic.
24-43. M. Study is useless except to show what a man has in him. --P.
A low ideal for a student. --M. Fame is a fine thing. --P. It would be a
fine thing if it were not shared by every dinner-table poet. --M. You
are too captious. It is a great thing to have written poems that are
proof against trunk-maker and pastry-cook.
24. #Quo didicisse?# The exclamatory infinitive with involved subject.
G., 534 (340); A., 57, 8, _g_.
25. #iecore#: the seat of the passions. Here 'heart' or 'breast' would
seem to be more appropriate. --#caprificus#: the wild fig-tree sprouts
in the clefts of rocks and cracks of buildings, which it rends in its
growth. _Ad quae | discutienda valent mala robora fici_, Juv., 10, 145.
26. #En pallor seniumque#: 'So that's the meaning of your studious
pallor (v. 124; 3, 85; 5, 62) and your (early) old age.' With _senium_
comp. Hor., Ep., 1, 18, 47: _inhumanae #senium# depone Camenae_. Persius
mocks at the weariness to the flesh which the student has undergone for
so paltry a result. This is the arrangement of Jahn (1843) and Hermann.
Jahn (1868) follows Heinr. in giving the line to the remonstrant. _En_,
originally an interrogative, is, after the time of Sallust, confounded
with _em_, and combined with the nom. in the sense of _em_, which
properly takes the accus. alone. So Ribbeck, _Beiträge zur Lehre von den
latein. Partikeln_, S. 35. --#o mores#: Cicero's famous ejaculation.
--#usque adeone#: _Usque adeone mori miserum est_, Verg., Aen., 12, 646;
_usque adeo nihil est_, Juv., 3, 84.
27. #scire tuum nihil est#, etc.: 'And is thy knowledge nothing if not
known' (Gifford). These jingles were much admired in antiquity. The
passage from Lucilius, which Persius is said to have imitated, reads,
according to L. Müller (fr. inc., 40, 73): _ne dampnum faciam, scire hoc
sibi nesciat is me_. A better example in Lucr., 4, 470.
28. #At#: objects. See G., 490; A., 43, 3, _b_. --#digito monstrari#:
+daktulô deiknusthai (daktulodeikteisthai)+. _Quod #monstror digito#
praetereuntium_, Hor., Od., 4, 3, 22; _saepe aliquis #digito# vatem
designat euntem_, Ov., Am., 3, 1. 19. --#hic est#: +houtos ekeinos+, in
the well-known story of Demosthenes. Cic., Tusc. Dis., 5, 36.
--#dicier#: On the form, see G., 191, 2; A., 30, 6, _e_, 4. So
_fallier_, 3, 50.
29. #cirratorum#: 'curl-pates.' Jahn cites Mart., 9, 29, 7: _Matutini
#cirrata# caterva magistri_. School-boys wore their hair long, but
Persius does not waste his epithets, and 'youths of quality' are
doubtless meant. Comp. the _lautorum pueros_ of Juv., 7, 177.
--#dictata#: 'Persius takes not only higher schools, but higher lessons,
_dictata_ being passages from the poets read out by the master (for want
of books) and repeated by the boys' (Conington). Translate 'a
lesson-book,' a 'school classic.'
30. #Ecce#: introduces a satiric sketch of 'classic poets at work.'
--#inter pocula#: 'over their cups.' Poems were read at table by an
+anagnôstês+, as lives of the saints are still read in religious houses.
31. #Romulidae#: Comp. _Titos_, v. 20; _trossulus_, v. 82; _Romule_, v.
87. --#dia#: +theia+, an affected word. 'Let us hear,' say the company,
'what his charming verses are about' (Pretor). Conington renders: 'What
news from the divine world of poesy?'
32. #hyacinthia laena#: The dandies of the day wore upper garments of
military cut and gay colors. A similar military dandyism on the part of
non-military men is observable in the Macedonian period. Comp.
+chlamudêphoroi andres+, Theocr., 15, 6, with the commentators.
33. #rancidulum quiddam#: 'affected stuff,' 'namby-pamby trash.'
--#balba de nare# = _de nare balbutiens_, 'with a nasal lisp,' 'with a
snuffle and a lisp' (Conington). _Balbus_ is especially used of the
introduction of an aspirate, and 'lisp,' which involves a spirant, is
only approximate. Comp. +thauma mega+, _inquid #balba#_, Lucil., 6, 20,
with L. Müller's note. --#locutus#: Perf. Part. where we should expect a
Present. G., 278, R.
34. #Phyllidas Hypsipylas#: Phyllis, fearing that she had been deserted
by her lover, Demophon, hanged herself, and was changed into an
almond-tree (Ov., Her., 2). Hypsipyle of Lemnos, after bearing two
children to Jason, was forsaken by him (Ov., Her., 6). These doleful
themes (_plorabilia_) were popular in Persius's time. The plural is
contemptuous in Latin as in English.
35. #eliquat#: 'filters.' Every rough particle is strained out so as to
make the voice 'liquid.' The passage from Apul., Flor., p. 351, Elm.,
cited by Jahn, _canticum videtur ore tereti semihiantibus in conatu
labellis #eliquare#_, indicates a cooing position of the lips, in which
the mouth simulates a colander. --#supplantat#: +huposkelizei+ (Lucil.,
29, 50, L. M.), 'trips up.' To judge by Hor., Sat., 2, 3, 274, _balba
#feris# annoso verba palato_, of which the language of Persius seems to
be an exaggeration, the sounds impinge upon the roof of the mouth
instead of coming out boldly-- a kind of lolling utterance. --#tenero#:
adds another shade: the tripping is light, for the roof is sensitive;
'minces his words as though his mouth were sore' (Pretor).
36. #adsensere viri#: Observe the Epic vein. _Adsensere omnes_, Verg.,
Aen., 2, 130; _adsensere dii_, Ov., Met., 9, 259 (Jahn). _Viri_,
'heroes.' --#non-? -- non-?# On the form of the question, see G., 455;
A., 71, 1, R.
37. #levior cippus#: Sufficiently familiar is the old wish, SIT · TIBI ·
TERRA · LEVIS, which, like the modern R · I · P ·, was promoted to the
dignity of initials (S · T · T · L ·). --#ossa#: _Patrono meo #ossa#
bene quiescant_, Petron., 39.
38. #manibus# = _cineribus_, 'remains' (Conington). On this
'materialism,' see Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, 2, 24 foll.
40. #nascentur violae#: 'Lay her i' the earth | and from her fair and
unpolluted flesh | may _violets spring_.' Shaksp., Hamlet, 5, 1.
--#'Rides' ait#: As in Hor., Ep., 1, 19, 43. _Ait_ is used like _inquit_
(G., 199, R. 3), without any definite reference. --#nimis uncis |
naribus indulges#: 'you are too much given to hooking, curling your
nose.' _Naribus uti_, Hor., Ep., 1, 19, 45; _naso adunco_, Hor., Sat.,
1, 6, 5.
41. #an#: when used alone is more or less rhetorical, and is intended to
force a conclusion involved in the foregoing; 'What?' 'So then?' G.,
459; A., 71, 2, _b_. Persius's use of it is instructive: v. 87; 2, 19.
26; 3, 19. 27. 61; 5, 83. 125. 163. 164; 6, 51. 63. --#velle meruisse#:
See G., 275, 2; A., 53, 11, _d_, for the tense of _meruisse_. The Perf.
after _velle_ is legal rather than Greek. Comp. v. 91, _qui me volet
#incurvasse# querela_. So Hor. (Sat. 2, 3, 187), mimicking the legal
tone: _ne quis #humasse velit# Aiacem, Atrida, vetas? cur?_ Other Perf.
Infinitives with varying motives are found: 1, 132; 2, 66; 4, 7. 17; 5,
24. 33; 6, 4. 6. 17. 77.
42. #os populi#: 'popular applause,' 'a place in the mouths of men'
(Conington). Comp. the phrase _in ore esse_. --#cedro digna#: Cedar oil
was used to preserve manuscripts. _Speramus carmina fingi | posse
linenda cedro_, Hor., A. P., 331-2.
43. #nec scombros nec tus#: The fear of the mackerel is a stroke of
Catullus, 95, 8, which Milton imitates, Ep., 10: _gaudete scombri_.
Comp. Mart., 4, 86, 8. For _tus_, comp. Hor., Ep., 2, 1, 269: _deferar
in vicum vendentem #tus# et odores | et piper et quicquid chartis
amicitur ineptis_. The modern equivalent is the grocer or the
pastry-cook.
44-62. The poet gives up his dramatizing and speaks in his own person.
'I am not indifferent to fame, but I reject a standard which approves
such stuff as Labeo's, such ditties as "persons of quality" dictate
after dinner, a standard which makes a hot dish the test of poetic
fervor, and covers a multitude of poetic sins with a cast-off cloak. If
you had eyes in the back of your head, you would see that all this
praise is for value received.'
44. #dicere feci#: G., 527, R. 1; A., 70, 2.
45. #non ego#: 'I do not decline your praise-- no, not I.' G., 447; A.,
76, 3, _d_. Comp. 2, 3; 3, 78; and Hor., Ep., 1, 19, 37, _#non ego#
ventosae plebis suffragia venor_. --#si forte quid aptius exit#: 'if I
chance to turn out (off) a rather neat piece of work.' _Exit_ may mean
'to leave the shop' (_ex officina exire_, Cic., Parad., pr. 5), or 'to
leave the potter's wheel,' as _urceus exit_, Hor., A. P., 22 (Jahn).
Conington translates 'hatch' on account of _rara avis_. +Kakon ôon+. The
passage is imitated by Quint., 12, 10, 26.
46. #quando#: gives the reason for his saying _si forte_. There is no
necessity of writing _quanquam_, but the translation 'although' is not
unnatural, as causative particles are often adversative. Comp. _cum_ and
Gr. +epei+. --#rara avis#: proverbial as in the famous line of Juv., 6,
165.
47. #laudari metuam#: So Hor., _metuens audiri_, Ep., 1, 16, 60; _metuit
tangi_, Od., 3, 11, 10. In prose the construction is less common with
_metuo_ than with _vereor_. G., 552, R. 1; M., 376, Obs. --#cornea#: 'of
horn.' The metaphorical use seems to be novel. Comp. Hom., Od., 19, 211:
+ophthalmoi d' hôs ei #kera# hestasan êe sidêros+. --#fibra#: 'heart.'
See 5, 29.
48. #recti finemque extremumque#: 'the ultimate standard.' Conington
renders 'be-all and end-all.'
49. #euge, belle#: like _decenter_ (v. 84), are current expressions of
approbation at public readings. _Euge_, 'bravo!' _belle_, 'well said!'
_decenter_, 'pretty fair!' Martial gives us a list of popular comments
(2, 27, 3-4): _Effecte! graviter! st! nequiter! euge! beate! | hoc
volui!_ --#excute#: a favorite word with Persius as with Seneca, Ep.,
13, 8; 16, 7; 22, 10; 26, 3; De Ira, 3, 36 (Jahn). The metaphor is taken
from shaking clothes in order to get out any thing that may be concealed
in them-- Gr., +ekseiein+. We should say 'analyze.'
50. #quid non intus habet#: The figure is kept up. 'What is not covered
up in that beggarly rag of a _#belle#_'? --#non# = _nonne_. G., 445
and R.; A., 71, 1. --#Atti#: See v. 4. --#Ilias ebria#: Comp. _ebrius
sermo_, Sen., Ep., 19, 9.
51. #veratro#: white hellebore (_album multum terribilius nigro_, Plin.,
II. N., 25, 5, 21), a strong emetic, which students took 'to quicken
their wits.' The modern _veratrum_ is a different drug. --#elegidia#:
contemptuous, 'bits of elegies' on such themes as Phyllis and Hypsipyle.
_E._ a Greek word not in Greek lexicons, like _poetridas_, Prol., 13.
--#crudi#: with their dinners undigested and their brains muddled.
52. #dictarunt#: 'extemporize.' --#lectis#: 'sofas.' The ancients wrote
in a recumbent posture far more frequently than we do.
53. #citreis#: 'of citron wood,' 'wood of the thyia' (_Thyia
articulata_, African Arbor Vitae, Plin., 15, 29). The fabulous cost of
tables of this material is well known. Cic., Verr., 4, 17, 37. --#scis#:
'you know how.' _Scire_ in this sense is related to _posse_, as Fr.
_savoir_ to _pouvoir_, a traditional distinction. --#calidum#:
'hot-and-hot' (Pretor). --#ponere#: 1. 'serve up;' 2. 'cause to serve
up,' 'treat to.' _Heri non tam bonum #posui# et multo honestiores
cenabant_, Petron., 34. --#sumen#: a dainty dish in the eyes of Greek
and Roman. Comp. _vulva nil pulchrius ampla_, Hor., Ep., 1, 15, 41;
Plut., Sanit. Praec., 124F; Alciphr., Ep., 1, 20; and the joke in
Alexis, fr. 188 (3, 473 Mein.).
54. #comitem horridulum trita donare lacerna#: This is the kind of
patronage that galled Lucian (De Merced. Cond., 37), who mentions the
paltry present of an +ephestridion athlion hê chitônion huposathron+. On
the word _comitem_, see 3, 7. _Horridulum comitem_, 'shivering beggar of
a companion,' 'poor devil in your suite.' For the custom, comp. Hor.,
Ep., 1, 19, 37: _Non ego ventosae plebis suffragia venor | impensis
#cenarum# et #tritae# munere #vestis#_.
56. #qui pote?# _Pote_ is an archaism for _potis_. Both _potis_ and
_pote_ are used as predicates without regard to number and gender.
--#vis dicam#: G., 546, R. 3; A., 70, 3, _f_, R. _Vis_ does not wait for
an answer. See 6, 63. --#nugaris#: 'you are a twaddler' (Conington).
--#calve#: Persius calls up his _vetulus_ (v. 22) again, and gives him a
huge 'bombard' of a belly. Nero had a _venter proiectus_, and some
editors fancy that Nero's person is aimed at here, and Nero's poetry in
the verses that follow. See Introd., xxxvi.
57. #aqualiculus#: (said properly to mean 'a pig's stomach') 'paunch,'
'cloak-bag of guts,' Shaksp. --#protenso sesquipede#: Comp. the Greek
proverb: +pacheia gastêr lepton ou tiktei noon+. Even M. Martha is
forced to say: _Le trait n'est ni spirituel ni poli_ (_Moralistes
Romains_, p. 147). For the justification, see v. 128. Jahn (1843) reads
_propenso_.
58. #Iane#: Janus, who sees both ways, is secure from being laughed at
behind his back. --#ciconia pinsit# = _pinsendo ludit_. The fingers of
the mocker imitate the clapping of the stork's bill. _Pinsit_, 'pounds,'
because the _ciconia levat ac deprimit rostrum dum clangit_, Isidor.,
Orig., 20, 15, 3. 'Pecks at' is not correct; 'claps' is nearer. What
seems to be meant is mock applause.
59. #auriculas#: The imitation of ass's ears by the hands belongs to
universal culture. --#imitari mobilis# = _ad imitandum m._ G., 424,
R. 4; A., 57, 8, _f._ --#albas#: on account of the white lining. Ov.,
Met., 11, 176: _aures-- villis #albentibus# implet_.
60. #linguae#: The thrusting out of the tongue in derision is as common
now as it was then. --#canis Apula#: Apulia was the +dipsion Argos+ of
Italy. _Siticulosae Apuliae_, Hor., Epod., 3, 16. --#tantae#: So Jahn
and Herm. 'Tongues big enough to represent the thirst of an Apulian
hound' (Pretor). Jahn compares for the construction, Luc., 1, 259:
_quantum rura silent, tanta quies_. Conington considers _tantum_ 'much
neater,' and makes _quantum sitiat = quantum sitiens protendat_, 'a
length of tongue protruded like an Apulian dog in the dog-days.'
61. #vos, o patricius sanguis#: Hor., A. P., 291: _vos, o | Pompilius
sanguis_. The Nom. for the Vocative in solemn address. G., 194, R. 3;
A., 53, _a._ --#fas est# = _fatum est_, 'it is ordained.'
62. #occipiti#: Notice the exceptional Abl. in _i_. Comp. Auson.,
Epigr., 12, 8: _#occipiti# calvo es_, and _capiti_, v. 83. --#posticae#:
chiefly of the back part of a building: 'back-stairs' (Conington).
--#occurrite#: 'turn round and face' (Conington and Pretor). --#sannae#:
'flout,' 'gibe,' 'fleer,' +môkos+.
63-82. Persius takes up the thread which Janus had rudely snapt: 'We
have heard the bounden praise of dependants. What does the town say?
Why, they admire the smooth flow of the verse, the grand style. If they
find these requisites, little do they care about theme or order of
development; the 'prentice hand that bungles an eclogue, undertakes an
epic-- nay, jumbles eclogue and epic-- Bravo, poet! all the same.
Another mania is the passion for the old poets, a Pacuvian revival. What
is to be expected when all this bubble-and-squeak language is the daily
food of our children and the dear delight of lecture-halls?'
63. #Quis# = _qui_. G., 105; A., 21, 1, _a._ --#quis enim#: _Enim_, like
+gar+; 'why, what else?' 'of course.' G., 500; A., 43, 3, _d._
64. #nunc demum#: as if something marvellous had been accomplished.
--#severos#: 'captious, critical.'
65. #effundat#: 'suffers to glide smoothly,' a harsh expression.
--#iunctura#: The image is that of the joining of pieces of marble, as
in an _opus tessellatum_. Comp. Lucil., fr. inc., 10, 33 (L. M.): _quam
lepide +lexeis+ conpostae, ut tesserulae, omnes | arte pavimenti atque
emblemati' vermiculati_. The poet is compared with an artisan, not with
an artist. He knows how to fit the pieces together so perfectly as to
present a continuous smooth surface to the pressure of the most exacting
nail. Comp. v. 92. --#tendere versum#: 'to lay off a verse,' as a
carpenter lays off his work. The propriety of the word _tendere_ is
heightened, if we remember that the hexameter was called the _versus
longus_.
66. Carpenter-like, the versewright stretches his ruddled line
(_rubrica_), sights it (_oculo derigit uno_), and springs it. The modern
carpenter uses chalk instead of ruddle, but the red pencil may be
regarded as a survival of color. For references, see Rost's Passow, s.v.
+stathmê+. For the spelling _derigat_, remember that _dirigere_ is 'to
point in different directions;' _derigere_ 'in one.' --#ac si derigat#:
On the sequence, see G., 604; A., 61, 1, R.
67. #sive#: seldom used alone; here for _vel si_. --#in mores, in luxum,
in prandia regum#: a kind of anticlimax. _In_ does not necessarily,
though it does naturally, denote hostility. The _prandium_ was
originally a very simple meal. The Stoic model is set up in Seneca, Ep.
83, 6: _Panis deinde siccus et sine mensa prandium, post quod non sunt
lavandae manus._ The _manger sur le pouce_ became in time the _déjeuner
à la fourchette_ (_calidum prandium_, Plaut., Poen., 3, 5, 14), and then
the _déjeuner dinatoire_ (_prandia cenis ingesta_, Sen., N. Q., 4,
13, 6). _Regum_, 'grandees,' 'nabobs,' belongs to _prandia_ alone.
68. #res grandis#: 'sublimities.'
69. #heroas#: used as an adjective. --#sensus#: 'sentiments.'
--#adferre#: 'parade,' 'bring on parade.' On the Inf., see 3, 64.
70. #nugari graece#: 'dabble in Greek verses,' a phase of fashionable
education, no more peculiar to Nero than to Horace (Sat. 1, 10, 31).
--#ponere lucum#: 'put before our eyes,' 'paint,' 'describe.' _Lucus_,
a favorite poetic theme. Jahn thinks of the grove in which Mars and Rhea
Silvia met, Juv., 1, 7. Perhaps young poets tried their skill on groves,
as young draughtsmen on trees.
71. #artifices#: With _artifices ponere_ comp. _artifex sequi_, Prol.,
11. --#rus saturum#: 'lush, teeming country.' --#corbes-- focus--
porci#: all 'properties' of country life.
72. #fumosa Palilia faeno#: The festival called _Palilia_, in honor of
Pales (from the same radical as _pa-sco_), was celebrated on the
anniversary of the founding of Rome, April 21st. It was a day reeking
(_fumosa_) with bonfires of hay (_faenum_), over which the peasants
leaped, doubtless 'to appease the evil spirit by a pretended sacrifice'
(Pretor). The dictionaries will furnish the _loci classici_. The other
form, _Parilia_, is due to 'dissimilation.' Comp. _meridies_ for
_medidies_.
73. #unde#: 'the source of;' loosely used to show connection. --#Remus#:
not unfrequently takes the place of his longer brother, whose oblique
cases do not fit well into dactylic verse. So _turba Remi_, Juv., 10,
73; _reddat signa Remi_, Prop., 4, 6, 80; and the other examples in
Freund. --#sulco#: '_with_' and '_in_ the furrow.' See Prol., v., 1.
--#terens#: 'wearing bright' (Conington), 'furbishing.' König compares:
_#sulco attritus# splendescere vomer_, Verg., Georg., 1, 46.
--#dentalia#: 'share-beams,' Verg., Georg., 1, 171, with Conington's
note. --#Quinti#: Cincinnatus, Liv., 3, 26.
74. #cum dictatorem induit#: So Jahn (1843). Decidedly the easiest
reading, but the best in connection with _terens_. In his ed. of 1868,
Jahn reads _quem dictatorem_. Hermann objects to the expression, and
insists on _dictaturam_, appealing in his preface to Plin., H. N., 18,
3, 20, for _dictaturam_ in the sense of _vestem dictatoriam_. Surely, to
'robe dictator' and to 'robe with the dictatorship' are not far apart,
and the former is the more striking expression. --#trepida#: 'flurried.'
See v. 20. --#ante boves#: is supposed to give local coloring, and to
bring before us the 'slow, bovine gaze' of the astonished cattle.
75. #tua aratra#: Poetic plural. --#euge poeta#: Here the applause comes
in. Mr. Pretor considers the words from _corbes_ to _tulit_ 'a
quotation, perhaps from one of Nero's poems.'
76. #est nunc#: Persius attacks the _antiquarii_ in imitation of Horace.
The older Latin poets have long been restored to their rights. Accius
and Pacuvius hardly need defenders. Hermann makes the sentence
interrogative. --#Brisaei#: 'Bacchic.' _Brisaeus_ was an epithet of
Bacchus, transferred to the poet of Bacchus, who was perhaps too devoted
a worshipper of the god. There was a famous saying of Cratinus, who was
in like manner called +taurophagos+, a surname of Bacchus: +hudôr de
pinôn ouden an tekoi sophon+, fr. 186 (2, 119 Mein.). Comp. Hor., Ep.,
1, 19, 1. --#venosus#: For the figure, comp. Tac., Dial. 21. The
'standing out of the veins' refers not so much to the 'shrinking of the
flesh in old age' (Conington), as to the scrawniness of the person. So
Tacit. uses _durus et siccus_ of Asinius Pollio (l.c.), Gr. +ischnos+.
'Angular,' 'hard-lined,' is about what is meant. Others prefer
'thick-veined,' 'turgid.' --#liber#: of a play, Quint., 1, 10, 18;
Prop., 4 (3), 21, 28 (Jahn). --#Acci#: also written _Atti_ (584-650?
A.U.C.). Cicero calls him _gravis et ingeniosus poeta, summus poeta_
(pr. Planc., 24, 59; Sest., 56, 120); Hor., _altus_ (Ep., 2, 1, 56);
Ov., _animosi oris_ (Am., 1, 15, 19). Pacuvius said that the
compositions of Accius were _sonora quidem et grandia sed duriora paulum
et acerbiora_.
77. #Pacuvius#: nephew of Ennius (534-622 A.U.C.). His great model was
Sophocles. --#verrucosa#: 'warty,' intended to be a climax of ugliness.
--#moretur#: 'fascinates,' 'enthralls.' _Fabula-- valdius oblectat
populum meliusque #moratur#_, Hor., A. P., 321.
78. #Antiopa#: imitated from a lost play of Euripides. The fragments
have been collected by Ribbeck, _Tr. Lat. Reliq._, p. 62; comp. p. 278.
Antiope, as the mother of Amphion and Zethus, and the victim of Dirce,
is famous in literature and in art (the _Toro Farnese_). --#aerumnis cor
luctificabile fulta#: 'who props her dolorific heart on teen' (Gifford).
Jahn defends the conception as truly poetical, apart from the obsolete
language. 'The only stay of her sad heart is sorrow.' The words are
doubtless taken from the play itself, of course in different order.
_Aerumna_ was out of date as early as the time of Quintilian (8, 3, 26),
who protests against the use of it. As to _luctificabile_, if we go by
the fragments, it is Accius, rather than Pacuvius, that indulges in such
formations as _horrificabilis_, _aspernabilis_, _tabificabilis_,
_execrabilis_, _evocabilis_.
79. #lippos#: of the eyes of the mind. Comp. 2, 72.
80. #sartago#: literally 'a frying-pan,' 'hubble-bubble' (Conington),
'gallimaufry,' 'galimatias,' 'olio' (Gifford), 'olla podrida.'
81. #dedecus#: The language is disgraced and degraded by this mixture of
old and new. Persius would not have enjoyed Tennyson's resuscitations.
See Introd., xxiv. --#in quo#: 'at which.'
82. #trossulus#: an old name of the Roman knights, of disputed origin.
It was afterward used in derision. Jahn compares the German _Junker_.
--#exsultat#: +anapêda+, 'jumps up in delight.' --#per subsellia#: Jahn
understands the 'benches' or 'forms' in court; others, perhaps more
correctly, the seats in the lecture-hall. There is a climax. First,
private teaching; next, public lectures; thirdly, practical life, to
which we come in the following verse. --#levis#: the position is
emphatic, 'the smug, womanish creature.' _Levis_ is _levigatus_. Ancient
literature is full of allusions to this effeminate +paratilsis+.
83. #nilne#: stronger than _nonne_, 'not a blush of shame.' --#capiti#:
rarer Ablative in _i_. Neue gives examples (_Formenlehre_, 1, 242). The
simple Abl. is found with _pellere_, even in prose, and the Dative,
which some prefer, would be forced. --#cano#: See note on v. 9.
84. #quin optes#: G., 551; A., 65, 1, _b._ --#tepidum#: 'lukewarm,'
_decenter_ being faint praise. 'In good taste' (Conington). Gr.
+prepontôs+.
85. #'Fur es'#: The accuser puts his point plainly enough; in three
letters, as the Romans would say. --#ait#: Comp. v. 40. --#Pedio#: Jahn
thinks it likely that this Pedius is not Horace's man (Sat., 1, 10, 28),
but one Pedius Blaesus, condemned under Nero, Tac., Ann., 14, 18; Hist.,
1, 77. Persius knew more about Horace than about the _causes célèbres_
of his own day. --#rasis antithetis#: commonly rendered 'polished
antitheses.' With _radere_ comp. the Gr. +diesmileumenai phrontides+,
Alexis, fr. 215 (3, 483 Mein.). But the figure may possibly be taken
from the careful removal of overweight in either scale of the balance.
The antitheses are scraped down to an exact equipoise.
86. #doctas figuras#: _Doctus_, Scaliger's correction, which requires,
moreover, a period at _figuras_, is unnecessary. _Doctas figuras_, like
_artes doctae_, _dicta docta_, _doli docti_. _Figurae_, +schêmata+,
embraces 'tropes.' --#posuisse# = _quod posuerit_. G., 533; A., 70, 5,
_b._
87. #an#: 'what?' 'can it be that?' --#Romule#: bitter, like _Titi_,
_Romulidae_, _trossulus_. Comp. Catull., 29, 5. 9. --#ceves#: 'Wag the
tail' keeps within bounds of possible translation.
88. #men moveat?# So _#men moveat# cimex Pantilius_, Hor., Sat., 1, 10,
78. The sentiment is that of the well-worn _si vis me flere, dolendum
est | primum ipsi tibi_, Hor., A. P., 102. _Moveat_ sc. _Pedius_.
--#quippe#: is often ironical, 'good sooth.' --#protulerim#: The Perf.
Subj. in a sentence involving total negation.
89. #cantas#? 'you sing, do you?' --#fracta te in trabe pictum#:
Shipwrecked men appealed to charity by carrying about pictures of the
disaster which had overtaken them. Comp. 6, 32. _Si #fractis# enatat
exspes | navibus, aere dato qui pingitur_, Hor., A. P., 20, and Juv.,
14, 302. _Trabe_ is the wrecked vessel as it appears in the picture,
although it is possible that the painting may have been put on a broken
plank of the ship, in order to heighten the pathos. So Jahn.
90. #ex umero#: We say 'on the shoulder,' from a different point of
view. G., 388, R. 2. --#nocte paratum#: 'got up overnight.'
91. #plorabit#: an imperative future. --#volet#: Observe the greater
exactness of the Latin expression. G., 624; A., 27, 2. --#incurvasse#:
See v. 42, and add Liv., 28, 41, 5; 30, 14, 6; 40, 10, 5, and the _S. C.
de Bacanalibus_ (passim).
92-106. 'But,' rejoins the impersonal personage, whom Persius always has
at hand, 'we have made great advances in art. Contrast this verse and
that verse with the roughness of the Aeneid!'-- 'The Aeneid rough? Well,
what is smooth? [_He gives a specimen of fashionable poetry._] If we had
an inch of our sires' backbone, such drivel would be impossible. And as
for art-- it is as easy as spitting.'
I have followed the distribution as presented in Hermann. Jahn gives vv.
96, 97 to Persius, 98-102 to the interlocutor, the rest to Persius. It
is impossible to discuss all the arrangements that have been suggested
for this passage.
92. #decor#: Gr. +charis+. --#iunctura#: is used as in v. 64, of
'smoothness,' 'harmonious sequence,' the even surface without a break.
See Quint., 9, 4, 33. All the specimen verses that follow avoid
mechanically the offences against _iunctura_ that Quintilian enumerates,
and do not avail themselves of the license which he accords to a _grata
neglegentia_. There is no elision, no synaloepha, in any of them. As
these fashionable verses have been held up to derision by the satirist,
commentators have been busy in hunting out defects, and translators have
vied with each other in absurd renderings. But Jahn has wisely warned us
against an over-curious search into the supposed faults of these verses,
which Vossius pronounced superior to any thing in the compositions of
the critic himself. It is enough for us to know that to the ear of
Persius the lines lacked masculine vigor. The multiplication of
diaereses, the length of the words, the careful avoidance of elision,
the dainty half-rhyme of _bombis_ and _corymbis_, the jingle of
_ablatura_ and _flexura_, may be cited as confirmations of the view of
Persius, but, with the exception of the desperate verse 95, the diction
is in keeping with the theme. If _adsonat Echo_ is not ridiculous in
Ovid (Met., 3, 505), it is not ridiculous here; and one surely needs to
be told that _reparabilis_ is not a happy adjective for Echo, who is
always 'paying back' and making good.
93. #cludere versum#: like _concludere versum_ (Hor., Sat., 1, 4, 40),
is 'round a verse' (Conington), rather than 'close a line.' --#didicit#:
What is the subject? 'Our man,' 'our poet,' the lover of _decor et
iunctura_? So most commentators. Heinr. makes _Attis_ the subject. The
personification of _iunctura_ would not be too harsh for Persius.
--#Berecyntius Attis#: It suffices to refer to Catull., 63. Berecyntus,
a mountain in Phrygia.
94. #Nerea#: god of the sea, the water. In modern Gr. +neron+ is
'water.' The use, which Conington calls 'grotesque,' is almost as
'grotesque' as _Vulcanus_ for 'fire.' The scholiast thinks of Arion's
dolphin. Bacchus's dolphin is as likely.
95. #sic costam longo subduximus Appennino#: With the close of the
verse, comp. Ov., 2, 226: _Aeriaeque Alpes et nubifer Appenninus_; and
Haupt's note. 'We filched a rib from the long Apennine.' The
interpretations are all unsatisfactory. The scholiast sees in the
removal of the rib from the mountain a metaphor for the removal of a
syllable from the hexameter. The only point worthy of notice in this
remark is the emphasis laid on the spondaic verse. The _Graece nugari
soliti_ doubtless used spondaic verses more freely than the model Latin
poets (comp. Catull., 64). Some understand the words to refer to a
forced march (_putavi tam pauca milia #subripi# posse_, Sen., Ep.,
53, 1); others to the device attributed to Hannibal in crossing the Alps
(_montem rumpit aceto_, Juv., 10, 153). It is all idle guess-work,
without a context; but, guess for guess, the expression would suit a
'Titanomachia,' and the rib might answer for a weapon, as once a
jaw-bone did. The jingle of the verse is like Verg., Aen., 3, 549:
_cornua #velatarum# obvertimus #antennarum#_, quoted by the scholiast.
96. #Arma virum!# 'Compare with these elegant verses _Arma virum_; what
a rough affair!' Not only were the opening words of a poem used to
indicate the poem itself-- +Mênin aeide+ the Iliad, +Andra moi ennepe+
the Odyssey, _Arma virum_ the Aeneid-- but the first verses were
considered peculiarly significant. So the metrical structure of the
first verse of the Iliad is very different from that of the first verse
of the Odyssey. _Arma virum_, etc., with its short words and its
frequent caesurae, was harsh to the ear of the interlocutor, and is
compared with the rough, cracked bark of the cork-tree. --#spumosum et
cortice pingui#: 'frothy and fluffy' (Conington). As usual, Persius
works out his comparison into minute details.
97. #vegrandi subere#: So Jahn, instead of _praegrandi subere_. Do not
translate 'huge, overgrown bark' (Conington), but 'dwarfed, stunted
cork-tree.' See Ribbeck (_Beiträge zur Lehre von den lateinischen
Partikeln_, S. 9), who has discussed _ve_ and this verse at some length.
Both Conington and Pretor admire the metaphysics of Jahn, who has
'explained, after Festus and Nonius, _vegrandis_ as _male grandis_, so
as to include the two senses attributed to it by Gell., 5, 12; 16, 5, of
_too small_ and _too large_.' But _ve-_ means separation (Vanicek,
_Etym. Wb._, S. 166); _ve-cor-s_, 'out of one's mind;' _ve-sanu-s_, 'out
of one's sound senses;' _ve-grandi-s_, 'shrunken,' 'dwarfed,'
'undergrown' (if the word is admissible). For the growth of the
cork-tree, R. refers to Plin., N. H., 16, 8, 13: _suberi #minima
arbor#-- cortex tantum in fructu, praecrassus ac renascens atque etiam
in denos pedes undique explanatus_. Some of the best commentators give
these two verses (96 and 97) to Persius, and consider _Arma virum_ as an
invocation of the shades of Vergil, 'as Horace, A. P., 141, contrasts
the opening of the Odyssey with _Fortunam Priami cantabo_.' _Hoc_ is
supposed to refer to the specimen verses. Ribbeck also (l.c.) regards
the swollen, light bark of the low cork-tree as the image of the _genus
tumidum et leve_, as opposed to the _grande et grave_. --#coctum#:
'thoroughly dried.'
98. #Quidnam igitur#: _Igitur_ is not unfrequently used in questions, as
our 'then.' So _quidnam igitur censes?_ Juv., 4, 130. But, unless the
question is a rejoinder, it is not very appropriate. 'If the Aeneid is
rough, give us something really soft,' would be a fit reply to _Arma
virum_, etc., in the mouth of the objector. Conington, who gives 96-98
to Persius, connects thus: 'If these are your specimens of finished
versification, give us something peculiarly languishing.' --#laxa
cervice#: the attitude of the _mobile guttur_, v. 18.
99. #Torva mimalloneis#: Persius can not wait for a specimen, and gives
one himself. This is much more dramatic than the arrangement, which
makes the respondent cite the verses. The verses are attributed to Nero
by the scholiast, and in fact Nero is said to have composed a poem on
the Bacchae, Dio., 61, 20. The theme is so common that no conclusion is
to be drawn from that statement. Mr. Pretor, who understands by
_iunctura_ 'a resetting of old verses,' regards 99-102 as a weak
_réchauffé_ of Catull., 64, 257 seqq., and compares Tac., Ann., 14, 16.
--#Torva#: 'grim.' So _#torvum#que repente | clamat_, Verg., Aen., 7,
399 (of Bacchanalian madness). --#mimalloneis#: from Mimas, on the coast
opposite Chios. With the whole verse comp. _multis raucisonos efflabant
cornua bombos_, Catull., 64, 264, and Lucr., 4, 544.
100. #vitulo superbo#: variously caricatured as 'the haughty, the
scornful calf.' No such effect could have been produced by the original.
Comp. +tauroi hubristai+, Eur., Bacch., 743 (Jahn); +gaurotera moschô+,
Theocr., 11, 21; _equae superbiunt_, Plin., 10, 63. The Bacchanal
rending of animals is familiar. --#ablatura#: On this free use of the
future participle, see G., 672; A., 72, 4.
101. #Bassaris#: a Bacchante. Jahn cites a Greek epigram (Anth. Pal., 6,
74), which shows how close a resemblance may be due simply to community
of theme. --#lyncem#: 'The lynx was sacred to Bacchus as the conqueror
of India.'
102. #euhion#: Gr. +euion+, Accus. of +euios+ (commonly but falsely
spelled _Evius_), _Euhius_, Bacchus. --#reparabilis#: Actively, as
Horace's _dissociabilis_, Od., 1, 3, 22; 'renewing,' 'restoring,'
'reawakening.' So Ov., Met., 1, 11, of the moon: _#reparat# nova
cornua_. --#adsonat#: 'chimes in.'
103. #testiculi vena ulla paterni#: '_Honestius expressit_, Ov., Her.,
16, 291: _si sint vires in semine avorum_.' 'If we had one spark of our
fathers' manhood alive in us' (Conington).
104. #delumbe#: 'backboneless,' 'marrowless.' Comp. +ischiorrôgikos+
--#saliva#: Spittle is 'foolish rheum' as well as tears.
105. #in udo est Maenas et Attis#: 'Your Maenas and your Attis-- it
drivels away.'
106. #nec pluteum caedit#, etc.: _Pluteus_, which is commonly rendered
'desk,' is, 'according to the scholiast, the back-board of the
_lecticula lucubratoria_,' or studying-sofa, such as Augustus indulged
in, Suet., Aug., 78; comp. v. 53. 'The man lies on his couch after his
meal, listlessly drivelling out his verses, without any physical
exertion or even motion of impatience' (Conington). Persius underrates
the artistic finish, as he has overdrawn the moral conclusion.
--#demorsos#: 'bitten down to the quick.' _Et in versu faciendo | saepe
caput scaberet vivos et roderet ungues_, Hor., Sat., 1, 10, 70.
107-121. M. But what is the use of offending people? We must not tell
the truth at all times. You will have a cool reception at certain great
houses. Nay, the dog will be set on you. --P. Well! I make no struggle.
Every thing is lovely. No nuisance, you say. All right. Boys, let us go
somewhere else. But there was Lucilius-- he wielded the lash, he gnawed
the bones of his victims. There was Horace-- he probed his friend's
heart and punched him in the ribs, and had the town dangling from the
gibbet of his tip-tilted nose. And I am not to say-- Bo! Not all to
myself? Not with a ditch for my confidant? Nowhere? Nowhere, you say?
But I will. I have found a place-- a ditch. It is my book. Here, book,
is my great secret: 'All the world's an ass.' What a relief!
107. #quid#: What case? --#radere#: 'rasp.' --#mordaci vero#: _Verum_ is
so completely a substantive that there is no difficulty about _mordaci
vero_ (comp. G., 428, R. 2). Much bolder is _generoso honesto_, 2, 74;
_opimum pingue_, 3, 32.
108. #vid[)e]#: like _cav[)e]_, and other iambic Imperatives. G.,
704, 2; A., 78, 2, _d_. --#sis# = _si vis_, to soften the Imperative,
'pray do.' --#maiorum tibi forte#: Hor., Sat., 2, 1, 60: _O puer ut sis
| vitalis metuo et maiorum ne quis amicus | #frigore# te feriat._
_Maiores_ = 'grandees.'
109. #limina frigescant#: like the modern slang, 'leave one out in the
cold.' _Limen_ is used in many Latin turns where 'threshold' would be
too stately in English. Mrs. Gamp would render: 'the great man's cold
doorsteps will settle on your lungs.' --#canina littera#: 'R is for the
dog,' Shaksp., Romeo and Jul.; 'A dog snarling R,' Ben Jonson. See
Dictionaries, s.v. _hirrire_. Gr. +ararizein+. An allusion to the
familiar _cave canem_. 'The snarl is that of the great man' (Scholiast).
Conington compares _ira cadat naso_, 5, 91. The obvious interpretation
is the right one. 'There is a sound of snarling in the air,' refers
simply to the great man's dog, which will be set on the unwelcome
satirist.
110. #per me#: 'for all I care,' +emou g' heneka+, a familiar use of the
preposition _per: #per me# habeat licet_, Plaut., Mercat., 5, 4, 29.
--#equidem#: Not for _ego quidem_, although this opinion affected the
practice of Cicero, Horace, Vergil, Quintilian, the younger Pliny.
Sallust, like Varro, combines _equidem_ with every person. So Ribbeck
(l.c. S. 36), who derives _equidem_ from _e_ interj. and _quidem_.
Conington tries to save the rule here by making the expression
equivalent to _equidem concedo_. Another exception is found 5, 45, where
C. goes through the same legerdemain: _non #equidem# dubites_, 'I would
not have you doubt.' --#alba#: 'lovely,' 'whitewash them as much as you
please.'
111. #nil moror#, etc.: The whole line, indeed the whole passage, is
strongly conversational in its tone. _Nil moror_, 'I don't wish to be in
your way, to spoil sport.' Comp. Ter., Eun., 3, 2, 7, and Gesner, s.v.
_moror_. --#bene#: Comp. Cic., Fam., 7, 22: _bene potus._ See also note
on 4, 22. --#mirae res#: 'wonders of the world' (Conington), 'miracles
of perfection.'
112. #hoc iuvat?# 'I hope that is satisfactory.' --#veto quisquam faxit
oletum#: 'commit no nuisance.' Observe the legal tone. _Quisquam_, on
account of the negative idea. The negative _ne_ is omitted after _veto_
as often after _caveo_. G. 548, R. 2; A., 57, 7, _a_. _Faxit_,
a disputed form. G., 191, 5; A., 30, 6, _e_.
113. #pinge duos anguis#: 'a sign of dedication rather than of
prohibition' (Pretor). The dedication involves the prohibition. This is
one of the innumerable phases of serpent-worship. For the serpent, as
the symbol of the _genius loci_, which is Greek as well as Latin, see
Verg., Aen., 5, 95, and the commentators. The reading _pinguedo sanguis_
of some of the best MSS. may be mentioned, _animi causa_.
114. #secuit#: 'cut to the bone.' --#Lucilius#: The _loci classici_ are
Hor., Sat., 1, 4, 6; 1, 10, 1; 2, 1, 62; Juv., 1, 19, 165. The
_testimonia de Lucilio_ have been collected and annotated by L. Müller,
Lucil., p. 170 seqq.; p. 288 seqq.
115. #Lupe, Muci#: L. Cornelius Lentulus Lupus Cons. A.U.C. 598, and P.
Mucius Scaevola Cons. A.U.C. 621, Juv., 1, 154. --#genuinum#: 'Breaking
the back-tooth' shows the eagerness with which the satirist gnawed the
bones of his victims. Comp. Petron., 58: _venies sub #dentem#_, 'you
will be "chawed" up.'
116. A deservedly admired characteristic of Horace. --#vafer#: a hard
word to catch. _Vafer_ crowns the formidable list of synonyms in the
well-known passage of Cic., Off., 3, 13, 57: _versuti, obscuri, astuti,
fallacis, malitiosi, callidi, veteratoris, #vafri#_, 'a shuffler,
a hoodwinker, a trickster, a cheat, a designing rascal, a cunning fox,
a blackleg, _a sly dog_.' The indirectness of _vafer_ may sometimes be
rendered by 'politic,' 'adroit.' 'Rogue' is a tolerable equivalent.
--#amico#: is much happier than _amici_ would be; it makes the friend a
party to the game. _Horatius qui ridendo verum dicit_ (Sat., 1, 1, 24)
_tam leniter vitia tangit, ut ipse, quem tangit, amicus rideat et
poetam, qui dum ludere videtur intima aggreditur, lubens admittat et
excipiat_ (Jahn, after Teuffel). --#admissus#: 'gets himself let in,'
'gains his entrance' (Conington, after Gifford).
117. #praecordia#: 'heartstrings.'
118. #excusso#: Persius would not be Persius, if he did not give us a
problem even in his best passages. _Excusso naso_ stronger than
_emunctae naris_, Hor., Sat., 1, 4, 8 (Jahn). According to Heinr.,
_excusso = sursum iactato_, like _excussa brachia_, Ov., Met., 5, 596,
which seems to suit _suspendere_. Conington renders, 'with a sly talent
for tossing up his nose and catching the public on it,' doubtless with
reference to 'tossing in a blanket,' a pastime not unknown to the
ancients: _Ibis ab #excusso# missus in astra sago_, Mart., 1, 3, 8.
Comp. Suet., Otho, 2; Cervantes, Don Quijote, 1, 17; and on the
_sagatio_, see Friedländer, _Sittengesch._, 1, 25. As the blanket is
drawn tight in order to effect the elevation of the person tossed, we
may combine with this figure the old version of an 'unwrinkled nose,'
a nose that is 'kept straight' (_exporrectus_) by the owner to
disguise his merriment (_ac si nihil tule ageret_). But this is
over-interpretation, the besetting sin of the editors of Persius.
--#callidus suspendere#: On the construction, see Prol., 11. --#naso#:
_Naso #suspendis# adunco_, Hor., Sat., 1, 6, 5. Comp. 2, 8, 64.
119. #men#: On _ne_ in rhetorical questions, see v. 22. --#nec clam--nec
cum scrobe#: 'neither to myself nor with a hole in the ground for my
listener.' The negative in _nefas_ is subdivided by _nec-- nec_, G.,
444, R. Others supply _fas_, G., 446, R. --#nusquam#: The answer of the
critic, Jahn (1843). In the ed. of 1868 he writes with Hermann,
_nusquam?_ as a part of Persius's question. The arrangement in the text
seems to be more in accordance with Persius's fashion of anticipating an
answer (+anthupophora+). 'Nowhere? you say.' --#scrobe#: Allusion to the
story of Midas and his barber, for which no reader will need to be
referred to Ov., Met., 11, 180 seqq.
121. #quis non habet?# According to the _Vita Persii_, the poet had
written _Mida rex habet_, intended for King Populus. Cornutus, afraid
that Nero would take the fling to himself, changed the words to _quis
non habet?_ The story is not very consistent with the theory that
Persius went so far as to ridicule Nero's poetry.
122. #ridere meum#: See v. 9. --#nulla#: G., 304, R. 2. --#vendo#: 'I am
going to sell;' familiar present for future; hence = _vendito_.
123. #Iliade#: Probably the Iliad of Labeo. Homer's Iliad would be too
extravagant. --#audaci quicumque#, etc.: The poet distinctly points to
the mordant Old Attic Comedy as his model; yet there is little trace of
direct imitation of the worthies whom he cites, and the interval of
conception is abysmal. --#adflate#: Persius, like some other Roman
poets, goes beyond reasonable bounds in the use of the Vocative as a
predicate. G., 324, R. 1; A., 35, _b_. The Greeks were cautious, and in
Vergil the Vocative can be detached and felt as such, but not here, nor
in 3, 28. --#Cratino#: the oldest of the famous comic triumvirate:
_Eupolis atque #Cratinus# Aristophanesque poetae_, Hor., Sat., 1, 4, 1.
Cratinus was the Archilochus of the Attic stage, hence _audax_. See the
famous characteristic in Aristophanes, Eq., 527.
124. #iratum Eupolidem#: The epithet is borne out by the fragments.
--#praegrandi cum sene#: Aristophanes. The adjective refers to his
greatness: 'the old giant.' _Sene_ is not to be pressed. Men who come
before the public early are often called old before their time. Hannibal
calls himself an old man when he was only in his forty-fourth year,
Liv., 30, 30. Others understand _sene_ as a compliment to an 'ancient'
author. Instead of Aristophanes, Heinrich and others suppose that
Lucilius is meant. Comp. Hor., Sat., 2, 1, 34: _vita #senis#_, although
Lucilius was only about forty-five at the time of his death-- but see L.
Müller, _Lucilius_, p. 288. --#palles#: 'study yourself pale over.' The
combination with the Accusative is bold, but not bolder than other
cognate Accusatives. 'Gain a Eupolidean pallor' = 'a pallor due to
Eupolis.' For different phases of _pallere_ with Accus., see 3, 43. 85;
5, 184.
125. #decoctius#: The figure is from wine that is 'boiled down,' 'well
refined.' Not 'opposed to the _spumosus_ of v. 96' (Conington), as is
shown by _coctum_, v. 97. --#audis#: 'have an ear for' (Conington).
126. #inde# = _ab iis_, 'by these' (G., 613, R. 1; A., 48, 5), 'by the
study of these,' dependent on _vaporata_. --#vaporata#: 'steamed,' hence
'cleansed,' 'refined' (Jahn). Comp. _#purgatas# aures_, 5, 63; _aurem
mordaci #lotus# aceto_, 5, 86. --#lector mihi ferveat#: _Mihi_ really
depends on _ferveat_, though it may be conveniently translated by 'my'
with _lector_. 'Let my reader be one who comes to me with his ears aglow
from the pure effluence of such poetry.'
127. #non hic#: _Hic_ is different in tone from _is_, more distinctly
demonstrative, and hence more distinctly contemptuous. --#in crepidas#:
The simple Accusative with _ludere_ is the regular construction.
_Crepidae_, a part of the Greek national dress. Comp. Suet., Tib., 13:
_redegit se_ [_Tiberius_], _deposito patrio habitu, ad pallium et
#crepidas#_. Hence _fabulae crepidatae_ of tragedies with Greek plots.
--#Graiorum#: the rarer and more stilted form for _Graecorum_, perhaps
by way of rebuking the impertinence of this stolid would-be wag.
128. #sordidus#: 'low creature,' 'dirty dog.' Himself vulgar, he can not
understand refinement of manners or attire. --#qui possit#: Casaubon
reads _poscit_ to match _gestit_. But Indicative and Subjunctive may
well be combined, the former of a fact, the latter of a characteristic:
'a man who-- and a man to--.' So in the famous line: _sunt qui non
habeant, est qui non curat habere_, Hor., Ep., 2, 2, 182. --#lusce#:
'Old One-eye' (Conington). The lowness of the wit is evident. In v. 56
the poet appears to break his own rule, but baldness and corpulence are
in his eyes badges of vice, not simple misfortunes.
129. #aliquem#: G., 301. --#Italo#: 'provincial.' --#supinus# =
_superbus_. The head is thrown back with the chin in the air, a familiar
stage attitude. Others render 'lolling at his ease.'
130. #fregerit#: G., 541; A., 63, 2. --#heminas iniquas#: 'short
half-pint measures.' This was the duty of the aedile. --#Arreti#:
Arretium in Etruria. So Juvenal takes Ulubrae as the type of a small
provincial town: _vasa minora | frangere pannosus vacuis aedilis
#Ulubris#_, 10, 102.
131. #abaco#: The _abacus_ was a slab of marble or other material which
was covered with sand (_pulvis_), for the purpose of drawing
mathematical figures or making calculations (Jahn). Or _pulvere_ may be
dissociated from _abaco_, and then _abacus_ would be a counting-board,
_pulvis_, the sand on the ground (_eruditus pulvis_, Cic., N. D., 2, 18,
48), familiar from the story of the murder of Archimedes. --#metas#:
'cones.'
132. #scit#: as if this were a feat. Comp. v. 53. --#risisse#:
+gelasai+, 'to have his laugh at,' one of the Perfect Infinitives
mentioned in note on v. 41. --#vafer#: ironical. --#gaudere paratus#:
_Paratus_, as a Participle from _parare_, takes the Infinitive with
ease. The grammars generally treat it as an exceptional Adjective. Here
_paratus_ is +hoios+; 'Just your man to have a fit of glee.' Comp.
Petron., 43: _#paratus# fuit quadrantem de stercore mordicus tollere_.
133. #Cynico barbam#: 'a Cynic's beard for him.' G., 343, R. 2.
_#Vellunt# tibi #barbam# | lascivi pueri_, Hor., Sat., 1, 3, 133 (of a
Stoic). The beard was the badge of a philosopher. --#nonaria#: so called
because women of that class were not allowed to ply their trade before
the 'ninth hour'-- 'callet,' 'trull.' --#vellat#: because dependent;
otherwise _gaudet si vellit_. G., 666; A., 66, 2. The Cynic philosopher
and the _nonaria_ (+ho kai hê kuôn+) belong to each other by elective
affinity, Alciphron, 3, 55, 9. See an amusing parallel between
philosopher and courtesan in the same sophist, 1, 34; and on the worst
specimens of the 'Capuchins of antiquity,' as the Cynics have been
called, comp. Friedländer, _Sittengesch._, 3, 572.
134. #edictum#: 'play-bill,' after Sen., Ep., 117, 30. Others, 'the
business of the courts,' the praetor's court being a favorite
lounging-place. --#prandia#: See v. 67. --#Calliroen#: possibly one of
the _elegidia procerum_ (v. 51), after the order of Phyllis and
Hypsipyle (v. 34). Comp. Ov., Met., 9, 407, Rem. Am., 455-6. Others
suppose that Persius meant a _nonaria_. See note on 6, 73, and comp.
Plutarch, Quaest. Conv., 3, 6, 4. With this gracious permission,
Casaubon compares the edict of Hor., Ep., 1, 19, 8: _Forum putealque
Libonis | mandabo siccis, adimam cantare severis_.
CRITICAL APPENDIX.
SATURA I.
6. #examenque#: examenve, J{a}., H. --8. #nam Romae quis non#: nam Romae
est quis non, J{a} --a: ac, J{a}.; ah, H. --9. #tum#: tunc, J{a}., H.
--11. #tunc, tunc, ignoscite-- 'Nolo:'# J{a}.; tunc, tunc-- ignoscite,
nolo, J{w}., H. --12. #splene cachinno#: splene-- cachinno, H. --14.
#quod#: J{a}., H.; quo, J{w}. --17. #leges#: legens, J{a}., H. --19.
#nec#: neque, J{a}. --32. #circa#: circum, J{a}. --#umeros#: humeros,
J{w}., H. --#hyacinthia#: hyacinthina, J{a}., H. --35. #supplantat#:
subplantat, J{w}. --36. #adsensere#: assensere, J{a}., H. --57.
#protenso#: propenso, J{a}. --60. #Apula#: Appula, H. --#tantae#:
tantum, Heinrich, Conington. --66. #derigat#: dirigat, J{a}., H. --69.
#adferre#: afferre, J{a}., H. --74. #cum#: J{a}.; quem, J{w}., H.
--#dictatorem#: dictaturam, H. --76. #Acci#: Atti, J{a}. --78. #fulta#:
fulta? H. --82. #exsultat#: J{a}., H.; exultat, J{w}. --88. #men moveat?
quippe et#: men moveat quippe et, J{a}., H. --89. #protulerim#:
protulerim? J{a}., H. --91. #querela#: J{a}., Brambach; querella, J{w}.,
H. --93. #cludere#: claudere, J{a}., H. --95. #Appennino#: Apennino,
J{a}. --97. #vegrandi#: praegrandi, H. --102. #euhion#: evion, J{a}.
--111. #omnes, omnes#: omnes etenim, J{a}. --114. #meite#: meiite,
J{a}., H. --119. #nec cum scrobe? nusquam?# nec cum scrobe, nusquam?
J{w}., H.; nec cum scrobe? 'nusquam.' J{a}. --130. #heminas#: J{a}., H.;
eminas, J{w}.
* * * * *
SATURA II.
Hunc, Macrine, diem numera meliore lapillo
qui tibi labentis apponit candidus annos.
funde merum genio. non tu prece poscis emaci,
quae nisi seductis nequeas committere divis;
at bona pars procerum tacita libabit acerra. 5
haud cuivis promptum est murmurque humilisque susurros
tollere de templis et aperto vivere voto.
'Mens bona, fama, fides' haec clare et ut audiat hospes;
illa sibi introrsum et sub lingua murmurat 'o si
ebulliat patruus, praeclarum funus?' et 'o si 10
sub rastro crepet argenti mihi seria dextro
Hercule! pupillumve utinam, quem proximus heres
inpello, expungam! namque est scabiosus et acri
bile tumet. Nerio iam tertia conditur uxor.'
haec sancte ut poscas, Tiberino in gurgite mergis 15
mane caput bis terque et noctem flumine purgas?
heus age, responde-- minimum est quod scire laboro--
de Iove quid sentis? estne ut praeponere cures
hunc-- 'cuinam?' cuinam? vis Staio? an scilicet haeres?
quis potior index, puerisve quis aptior orbis? 20
hoc igitur, quo tu Iovis aurem inpellere temptas,
dic agedum Staio, 'pro Iuppiter! o bone' clamet
'Iuppiter!' at sese non clamet Iuppiter ipse?
ignovisse putas, quia, cum tonat, ocius ilex
sulpure discutitur sacro quam tuque domusque? 25
an quia non fibris ovium Ergennaque iubente
triste iaces lucis evitandumque bidental,
idcirco stolidam praebet tibi vellere barbam
Iuppiter? aut quidnam est, qua tu mercede deorum
emeris auriculas? pulmone et lactibus unctis? 30
Ecce avia aut metuens divum matertera cunis
exemit puerum frontemque atque uda labella
infami digito et lustralibus ante salivis
expiat, urentis oculos inhibere perita;
tunc manibus quatit et spem macram supplice voto 35
nunc Licini in campos, nunc Crassi mittit in aedis
'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. 40
Poscis opem nervis corpusque fidele senectae.
esto age; sed grandes patinae tuccetaque crassa
adnuere his superos vetuere Iovemque morantur.
Rem struere exoptas caeso bove Mercuriumque
arcessis fibra 'da fortunare Penatis, 45
da pecus et gregibus fetum!' quo, pessime, pacto,
tot tibi cum in flammas iunicum omenta liquescant
et tamen hic extis et opimo vincere ferto
intendit 'iam crescit ager, iam crescit ovile,
iam dabitur, iam iam!' donec deceptus et exspes 50
nequiquam fundo suspiret nummus in imo.
Si tibi creterras argenti incusaque pingui
auro dona feram, sudes et pectore laevo
excutiat guttas laetari praetrepidum cor.
hinc illud subiit, auro sacras quod ovato 55
perducis facies; nam fratres inter aenos
somnia pituita qui purgatissima mittunt,
praecipui sunto sitque illis aurea barba.
aurum vasa Numae Saturniaque inpulit aera
Vestalisque urnas et Tuscum fictile mutat. 60
o curvae in terris animae et caelestium inanes!
quid iuvat hoc, templis nostros inmittere mores
et bona dis ex hac scelerata ducere pulpa?
haec sibi corrupto casiam dissolvit olivo,
haec Calabrum coxit vitiato murice vellus, 65
haec bacam conchae rasisse et stringere venas
ferventis massae crudo de pulvere iussit.
peccat et haec, peccat: vitio tamen utitur. at vos
dicite, pontifices, in sancto quid facit aurum?
nempe hoc quod Veneri donatae a virgine pupae. 70
quin damus id superis, de magna quod dare lance
non possit magni Messallae lippa propago:
conpositum ius fasque animo sanctosque recessus
mentis et incoctum generoso pectus honesto.
haec cedo ut admoveam templis et farre litabo. 75
NOTES.
SECOND SATIRE.
The theme of this Satire is the Wickedness and Folly of Popular Prayers.
The true philosopher is the only man that knows how to pray aright, and
the Stoic is your only true philosopher. Compare, on the subject of
prayer, the Second Alcibiades ascribed to Plato.
ARGUMENT.-- Macrinus, you may well salute your returning birthday. Your
wishes on that day of wishes are pure, whereas most of our magnates pray
for what they dare not utter aloud. Any one can hear their requests for
sound mind and good report, but the petitions for the death of an uncle,
a ward, a wife, the prayer for sudden gain, are mere whispers (1-15).
Strange that, in order to prepare for such impieties as these, men
should go through all manner of lustral services, and trust to the ear
of Jove what they would not breathe to any mortal (15-23). Strange that
men should fancy because Jove is not swift to strike the sinner dead
that he may be insulted with safety, or easily bought off by a lot of
greasy chitterlings (24-30).
Pass from wicked to foolish prayers. Grandam and aunt would have skinny
Master Hopeful a wealthy nabob, would have him make a great match. Girls
are to scramble for him, and roses spring up beneath his feet. Silly
petitions! Refuse them, Jupiter (31-40). Nor less silly are those
prayers whose fulfilment the suppliant himself defeats-- prayers for a
hale old age, despite rich made-dishes (41-43); prayers for wealth,
while the worshipper expends his whole substance in sacrifice (44-51).
The trouble lies in this, that men judge the gods by themselves. Because
gold brings a joyous flutter to their hearts, they think to sway the
gods by gold, and change to gold the vessels of the sanctuary. The gods
are measured by our 'accursed blubber,' that flesh which corrupts all
that it handles. Yet the flesh tastes what it touches, and enjoys the
ruin which it has wrought. But what can a pure god do with our gold? To
him it is a spent toy, an idle offering. Let us give the gods honest and
upright hearts, and a handful of meal will suffice to gain their
blessing (32-75).
Although the colors of the piece pale before the rhetorical glare of
Juvenal's Tenth Satire, which treats of a kindred theme-- the 'Vanity of
Human Wishes'-- the philosophical commonplace is handled with
considerable vigor, and with all the picturesque detail of the author's
style. And Montaigne, who, as a moralist, quotes Persius very often, has
garnished the 56th essay of his First Book with copious extracts from
this Satire.
1-15. Macrinus, your prayers are pure, you need no private audience of
the gods. Not so the petitions of many of our foremost men. Far
different is what they say and what they whisper, when they come before
the gods in prayer.
1. #Hunc diem#: The birthday was always a high-day in Rome, as
elsewhere. In French, _fête_ is a synonym of birthday. --#Macrine#:
'Plotius Macrinus, the scholiast says, was a learned man, who loved
Persius as his son, having studied in the house of the same preceptor,
Servilius. He had sold some property to Persius at a reduced rate'
(Conington). --#meliore#: sc. _solito_. G., 312, 2; A., 17, 5.
--#lapillo#: The Scythians used to drop into a quiver a stone for every
day, white for the good and black for the bad, and when life was over
the stones were counted. There is a similar story of the Thracians,
Plin., H. N., 7, 40, 41 (Jahn). The phrase 'white stone' is so common
that one passage will suffice as a parallel: _Felix utraque lux diesque
nobis | signandi #melioribus lapillis#_, Mart., 9, 52, 4.
2. #labentis#: not simply an _epitheton ornans_, 'the gliding years,'
but 'the years as they glide away.' _Eheu, fugaces, Postume, Postume |
#labuntur anni#_, Hor.., Od., 2, 14, 1. --#apponit#: 'puts to your
account.' Comp. _quem fors dierum cumque dabit lucro | #appone#_, Hor.,
Od., 1, 9, 15. Each day lived may be a day gained or a day lost. Comp.
also Hor., Od., 2, 5, 15. --#candidus#: +leukê hêmera, leukon euameron
phaos+, Soph., Ai., 709. Comp. Catull., 8, 3: _fulsere vere #candidi#
tibi soles_.
3. #genio#: 'The tutelary Deity, or "guardian angel," who was supposed
to attend on every individual from the cradle to the grave. Its cultus
was strictly materialistic, and should be compared with the offerings of
meat, drink, and clothes which were made to the _manes_ of the dead.
Comp. Censorin., De Die Nat., 3; Serv. ad Verg., Georg., 1, 302; Hor.,
Ep., 2, 2, 187: _scit #Genius#, natale comes qui temperat astrum |
naturae deus humanae_, _mortalis in unum | quodque caput, vultu
mutabilis albus et ater_. In character it was the reflex of the man
(comp. Sat. 6, 48, where it represents the _felicitas_ of the emperor);
it might be humored and appeased by proper attention, more especially by
sacrifice (comp. 5, 151), or irritated and made baneful by neglect
(comp. 4, 27; Juv., 10, 129). From these latter passages it would appear
to represent the _alter homo_, or second self.' So Pretor. The _genius_
is the divine element which is born with a man, and when he dies becomes
a _lar_, if he is good; if he is wicked, a _larva_, or a _lemur_.
Departed _genii_ were called _manes_-- 'good fellows'-- doubtless with a
view to propitiation. --#non tu#: Comp. 1, 45. --#emaci#: 'chaffering,
haggling.' Prayer was often conceived as bargain and sale. See v. 29,
and Plato, Euthyphro, 14E (Jahn). By the _prece emaci_ is meant the
_votum_, or vow, the +euchê+, and not the +proseuchê+, as Gregory of
Nyssa puts it (De Orat., Ed. Paris. a. 1638, Tom. 1, p. 724D). Casaubon
compares Hor., Od., 3, 29, 59: _ad miseras preces | decurrere et #votis
pacisci#_.
4. #seductis#: Comp. _paulum a turba #seductior# audi_, 6, 42.
--#nequeas#: G., 633; A., 65, 2.
5. #at bona pars#: Comp. Hor., Sat., 1, 1, 61: _at #bona pars# hominum._
--#libabit#: Gnomic or sententious future. See 3, 93. Jahn comp. Juv.,
8, 182: _quae | turpia cerdoni Volesos Brutumque decebunt_. 'That which
is done is that which shall be done.' The other reading, _libavit_
(gnomic Perfect), is not so good. See G., 228, R. 2, and Dräger,
_Histor. Synt. der lat. Sprache_, § 127.
6. #haud cuivis#: Comp. _non #cuivis# homini contingit_, Hor., Ep., 1,
17, 36. --#humilis#: 'that keep near the ground,' 'groundling,' hence
'low.' Persius delights in rare epithets.
7. #aperto vivere voto#: Comp. Mart., 1, 39, 6: _si quis erit recti
custos, mirator honesti | et #nihil arcano qui roget ore deos#_.
8. #Mens bona#: Comp. Hor., Ep., 1, 16, 59. --#Mens bona, fama, fides#:
are commonly considered to be the things prayed for. They are possibly
persons prayed to. 'Such notions as Welfare (_salus_), Honesty
(_fides_), Harmony (_concordia_), belong to the oldest and holiest Roman
divinities' (Mommsen). --#hospes#: 'a stranger,' 'any body.'
9. #o si#: On this form of the wish, see G., 254, R. 1; A., 57, 4, _b._
_O si_ may be considered an elliptical conditional sentence, but as the
ellipsis is emotional it must not be supplied. Such an apodosis as
scholars are prone to understand for the Greek (+kalôs an echoi+) _bene
sit_, would change the _wish_ into a _thought_. In this passage the
apodosis, which is involved in _praeclarum funus_, comes limping in as
an afterthought.
10. #ebulliat#: is slang. Comp. _tam bonus Chrysanthus animam
#ebulliit#_, Petron., 42 (_nos non pluris sumus quam #bullae#_, ibid.);
Sen., Apocolocynt., 4. Conington renders 'go off.' 'Kick the bucket'
would be worthy of Persius. _Ebulliat_ must be read _ebulljat_ (G.,
717). The best MSS. have _ebullit_, but such a Subjunctive would be more
than doubtful (G., 191, 3; Neue, _Formenl._, 2, 339). --#praeclarum
funus#: Either 'that would be a grand funeral,' or 'that would be a
corpse worth seeing.' In the former case the man of prayer tries to
salve his conscience by promising his uncle (comp. 1, 11) a 'first-class
funeral.' Comp. _#funus# egregie factum laudet vicinia_, Hor., Sat., 2,
5, 105. In the latter, he is welcoming the death of the crabbed old man.
For _funus_, in this connection, Jahn compares Prop., 1, 17, 8: _haecine
parva meum #funus# harena teget?_ The half-light of the passage is well
suited to the paltering knavery of the prayer.
11. #sub rastro#, etc.: Hor., Sat., 2, 6, 10: _O si urnam argenti fors
quae mihi monstret, ut illi_ | _thesauro invento, qui mercennarius
agrum_ | _illum ipsum mercatus aravit, dives amico_ | _Hercule_.
12. #Hercule#: This is Hercules +ploutodotês+, to whom the Romans
consecrated a tithe of their gains. Mommsen and others dissociate this
Hercules from the Greek +Hêraklês+. According to Casaubon and the schol.
(v. 44), Hermes (Mercury) is the bestower of windfalls found on the way,
Hercules the patron of sought treasures. --#pupillum#: 'The Twelve
Tables provided that where no guardian was appointed by will, the next
of kin would be guardian, and he would of course be heir' (Conington,
after Jahn).
13. #inpello#: 'whose kibe I gall,' 'whom I tread hard upon.'
--#expungam#: 'get him out' (of his place in the will). --#namque#:
gives an explanation, which serves at once to heighten and to excuse the
hope. 'You see he is in a bad way already. He is going to die at any
rate, and death would really be a relief to all parties.' --#scabiosus#:
'scrofulous.' --#acri | bile#: +drimeia cholê+, Casaubon, who compares
Juv., 6, 565: _consulit #ictericae# lento de funere matris_.
14. #tumet#: Comp. _turgescit vitrea bilis_, 3, 8; _mascula bilis_ |
_intumuit_, 5, 145. --#Nerio#: Nerius is the usurer in Horace, Sat., 2,
3, 69. Persius borrows his names from Horace, as Horace borrows his from
Lucilius-- progressive bookishness, of which there are several examples.
Comp. Pedius, 1, 85; Craterus, 3, 65; Bestius, 6, 37. --#conditur#: So
Jahn (1868) and Hermann. Jahn (1843) reads _ducitur_ with many MSS.
_Ducitur_ is not to be explained of 'being carried out to burial'
(Servius ad Verg., Georg., 4, 256), but in its ordinary sense of 'being
married.' Nerius has got rid of two wives, and 'is actually marrying a
third.' _Conditur_ is best supported by MS. authority, and gives a
sufficiently good sense. Hermann quotes, in support of _#conditur#_,
Mart., 5, 37, where a man survives the loss of a rich wife, and +gunaika
thaptein kreitton estin ê gamein+, Chaeremon, ap. Stobaeum, Sermon., 88,
22. Among the wishes in Lucian's Icaromen., 25, we find +ô theoi, ton
patera moi tacheôs apothanein+ (comp. v. 10), and +eithe klêronomêsaimi
tês gunaikos+, which is the key of this verse. On the use of the Dative,
see G., 352, R. 1; A., 51, 4, _c_.
15, 16. These are the impious prayers that must be prefaced by pious
observances.
15. #in gurgite mergis#: G., 384, R. 1; A., 56, 1, _c_, R.
16. #bis terque#: +dis kai tris+. G., 497. --#flumine#: Prol., 1. The
lustral use of the bath, the pollution of the night, the peculiar virtue
of running water, are common to Scriptural and classical antiquity.
Lev., chap. 15. _Illo_ | _mane die, quo tu indicis ieiunia nudus_ | _in
#Tiberi# stabit_, Hor., Sat., 2, 3, 290; _Ter matutino #Tiberi# mergetur
et ipsis_ | _verticibus timidum #caput abluet#_, Juv., 6, 523; _Ac
primum pura #somnum# tibi #discute# lympha_, Prop., 4, 10, 13. For
parallels, see Tylor, _Primitive Culture_, 2, 388.
17-30. With a sudden dramatic turn, Persius pins his omnipresent Second
Person to the wall by an ironical question touching his conception of
the divine character. 'What do you think of God? What can you think of
God when you confide to him wishes that you would conceal from a Staius?
Are you so bold because God is so slow? Are you so bold because God's
favor is so cheaply bought?'
17. #minimum est#, etc.: Ironical. --#scire laboro#: So Hor., Ep., 1, 3,
2, and _nosse laboro_, Sat., 2, 8, 19.
18. #estne ut#: On this periphrasis, see G., 558; A., 70, 4, _a_. _Si
#est#, patrue, culpam #ut# Antipho in se admiserit_, Ter., Phormio, 2,
1, 40. Comp. Hec., 3, 5, 51; 4, 1, 43; Adelph., 3, 5, 4; Hor., Od., 3,
1, 9. --#cures#: _Curare_, with Inf. usually has a negative (3, 78) or
equivalent, as here.
19. #'cuinam?' cuinam?# The first _cuinam_ is the question of the other
man, the second the echo of Persius. Comp. Ar., Ach., 594: +alla #tis#
gar ei? D. #hostis?# politês chrêstos.+ --#vis#: Comp. 1, 56. --#Staio#:
Staius can not be iden
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/22119