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Συνίσταντο οἱ μὲν ὡς τοῦτον, οἱ δ᾽ ὡς ἐκεῖνον....
ă, ĕ; ā, ē, ī, ō (letters with breve or macron)
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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.
Page | |
Introduction | vii |
A. Persii Flacci Saturarum Liber | 39 |
Vita Persii | 65 |
Notes | 71 |
Critical Appendix | 207 |
Index | 211 |
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.
Συνίσταντο οἱ μὲν ὡς τοῦτον, οἱ δ᾽ ὡς ἐκεῖνον πλὴν μόνου τοῦ Ἴωνος‧ ἐκεῖνος δὲ μέσον ἑαυτὸν ἐφύλαττεν. ΛΟΥΚΙΑΝΟΥ.
Persius das rechte Ideal eines hoffärtigen und mattherzigen der Poesie beflissenen Jungen. Mommsen.
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 (ὁδοιπορικῶν) 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.*
* 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.
Each visible line number—generally a multiple of 5—is a link to the Notes. Words referenced in the Critical Appendix are individually marked. All Notes and Appendix entries link back to the text. Cross-references within the Notes link either to text lines or to Notes on those lines, as appropriate.
Nec fonte labra prolui caballino,
nec in bicipiti somniasse Parnaso
memini, ut repente sic poeta prodirem.
Heliconidasque pallidamque Pirenen
5illis remitto, quorum imagines lambunt
hederae sequaces: ipse semipaganus
ad sacra vatum carmen adfero nostrum.
quis expedivit psittaco suum chaere
picamque docuit nostra verba conari?
10magister artis ingenique largitor
venter, negatas artifex sequi voces;
quod si dolosi spes refulserit nummi,
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
5praetulerint? nugae. non, si quid turbida Roma
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
10aspexi ac nucibus facimus quaecumque relictis,
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.
15scilicet haec populo pexusque togaque recenti
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
20ingentis trepidare Titos, cum carmina lumbum
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
25innata est rupto iecore exierit caprificus?’
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
30pro nihilo pendas?’ Ecce inter pocula quaerunt
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,
35eliquat ac tenero supplantat verba palato.
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
40nascentur violae? ‘Rides’ ait ‘et nimis uncis
naribus indulges. an erit qui velle recuset
os populi meruisse et cedro digna locutus
linquere nec scombros metuentia carmina nec tus?’
Quisquis es, o, modo quem ex adverso dicere feci,
45non ego cum scribo, si forte quid aptius exit,
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:
50quid non intus habet? non hic est Ilias Atti
ebria veratro? non si qua elegidia crudi
dictarunt proceres? non quidquid denique lectis
scribitur in citreis? calidum seis ponere sumen,
54scis comitem horridulum trita donare lacerna,
et ‘verum’ inquis ‘amo: verum mihi dicite de me.’
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,
60nec linguae, quantum, sitiat canis Apula, tantae!
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
65effundat iunctura unguis? scit tendere versum
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
70nugari solitos graece, nec ponere lucum
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
75et tua aratra domum lictor tulit—euge poeta!
est nunc Brisaei quem venosus liber Acci,
sunt quos Pacuviusque et verrucosa moretur
Antiopa, aerumnis cor luctificabile fulta.
hos pueris monitus patres infundere lippos
80cum videas, quaerisne, unde haec sartago loquendi
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?
85‘Fur es’ ait Pedio. Pedius quid? crimina rasis
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
90ex umero portes? verum, nec nocte paratum
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
95sic costam longo subduximus Appennino.
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,
100et raptum vitulo caput ablatura superbo
Bassaris et lyncem Maenas flexura corymbis
euhion ingeminat, reparabilis adsonat echo?’
haec fierent, si testiculi vena ulla paterni
viveret in nobis? summa delumbe saliva
105hoc natat in labris, et in udo est Maenas et Attis,
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
110littera.’ Per me equidem sint omnia protinus alba;
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,
115te Lupe, te Muci, et genuinum fregit in illis;
omne vafer vitium ridenti Flaccus amico
tangit et admissus circum praecordia ludit,
callidus excusso populum suspendere naso:
119men muttire nefas? nec clam, nec cum scrobe? nusquam?
hic tamen infodiam. vidi, vidi ipse, libelle:
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,
125aspice et haec, si forte aliquid decoctius audis.
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
130fregerit heminas Arreti aedilis iniquas;
nec qui abaco numeros et secto in pulvere metas
scit risisse vafer, multum gaudere paratus,
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;
5at bona pars procerum tacita libabit acerra.
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
10ebulliat patruus, praeclarum funus?’ et ‘o si
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.’
15haec sancte ut poscas, Tiberino in gurgite mergis
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?
20quis potior index, puerisve quis aptior orbis?
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
25sulpure discutitur sacro quam tuque domusque?
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
30emeris auriculas? pulmone et lactibus unctis?
Ecce avia aut metuens divum matertera cunis
exemit puerum frontemque atque uda labella
infami digito et lustralibus ante salivis
expiat, urentis oculos inhibere perita;
35tunc manibus quatit et spem macram supplice voto
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,
40Iuppiter, haec illi, quamvis te albata rogarit.
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
45arcessis fibra ‘da fortunare Penatis,
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,
50iam dabitur, iam iam!’ donec deceptus et exspes
nequiquam fundo suspiret nummus in imo.
Si tibi creterras argenti incusaque pingui
auro dona feram, sudes et pectore laevo
excutiat guttas laetari praetrepidum cor.
55hinc illud subiit, auro sacras quod ovato
perducis facies; nam fratres inter aenos
somnia pituita qui purgatissima mittunt,
praecipui sunto sitque illis aurea barba.
aurum vasa Numae Saturniaque inpulit aera
60Vestalisque urnas et Tuscum fictile mutat.
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,
65haec Calabrum coxit vitiato murice vellus,
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?
70nempe hoc quod Veneri donatae a virgine pupae.
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.
75‘Nempe haec adsidue: iam clarum mane fenestras
intrat et angustas extendit lumine rimas:
stertimus indomitum quod despumare Falernum
sufficiat, quinta dum linea tangitur umbra.
5en quid agis? siccas insana canicula messis
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.
10iam liber et positis bicolor membrana capillis
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.
15o miser inque dies ultra miser, hucine rerum
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
20succinis ambages? tibi luditur. effluis amens,
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
25est tibi far modicum, purum et sine labe salinum—
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?
30ad populum phaleras! ego te intus et in cute novi.
non pudet ad morem discincti vivere Nattae?
sed stupet hic vitio et fibris increvit opimum
pingue, caret culpa, nescit quid perdat, et alto
34demersus summa rursum non bullit in unda.
magne pater divum, saevos punire tyrannos
haud alia ratione velis, cum dira libido
moverit ingenium ferventi tincta veneno:
virtutem videant intabescantque relicta.
anne magis Siculi gemuerunt aera iuvenci,
40et magis auratis pendens laquearibus ensis
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,
45grandia si nollem morituri verba Catonis
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
50raderet; angustae collo non fallier orcae;
neu quis callidior buxum torquere flagello.
haud tibi inexpertum curvos deprendere mores,
quaeque docet sapiens bracatis inlita Medis
porticus, insomnis quibus et detonsa iuventus
55invigilat, siliquis et grandi pasta polenta;
et tibi quae Samios diduxit littera ramos
surgentem dextro monstravit limite callem.
stertis adhuc, laxumque caput conpage soluta
oscitat hesternum, dissutis undique malis!
60est aliquid quo tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum?
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!
65et quid opus Cratero magnos promittere montis?
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
70utile nummus habet; patriae carisque propinquis
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,
75et piper et pernae, Marsi monumenta clientis,
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,
80obstipo capite et figentes lumine terram,
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.
85hoc est, quod palles? cur quis non prandeat, hoc est?’
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!’
90qui dicit medico, iussus requiescere, postquam
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,
95quidquid id est: surgit tacite tibi lutea pellis.’
“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;
100sed tremor inter vina subit calidumque triental
excutit e manibus, dentes crepuere retecti,
uncta cadunt laxis tunc pulmentaria labris.
hinc tuba, candelae, tandemque beatulus alto
conpositus lecto crassisque lutatus amomis
105in portam rigidas calces extendit: at illum
hesterni capite induto subiere Quirites.
‘Tange, miser, venas et pone in pectore dextram.
nil calet hic. summosque pedes attinge manusque.
109non frigent.’ Visa est si forte pecunia, sive
candida vicini subrisit molle puella,
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.
115alges, cum excussit membris timor albus aristas;
nunc face supposita fervescit sanguis et ira
‘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
5ante pilos venit, dicenda tacendaque calles.
ergo ubi commota fervet plebecula bile,
fert animus calidae fecisse silentia turbae
maiestate manus. quid deinde loquere? “Quirites,
hoc puta non iustum est, illud male, rectius illud.”
10scis etenim iustum gemina suspendere lance
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,
15ante diem blando caudam iactare popello
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
20“Dinomaches ego sum,” suffla “sum candidus.” esto;
dum ne deterius sapiat pannucia Baucis,
cum bene discincto cantaverit ocima vernae.’
Ut nemo in sese temptat descendere, nemo,
sed praecedenti spectatur mantica tergo!
25quaesieris ‘Nostin Vettidi praedia?’ “Cuius?”
‘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
30ingemit: hoc bene sit! tunicatum cum sale mordens
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
35despuat ‘hi mores! penemque arcanaque lumbi
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,
non tamen ista filix ullo mansuescit aratro.’
42caedimus inque vicem praebemus crura sagittis.
vivitur hoc pacto; sic novimus. ilia subter
caecum vulnus habes; sed lato balteus auro
45praetegit. ut mavis, da verba et decipe nervos,
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:
50nequiquam populo bibulas donaveris aures.
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.
5‘Quorsum haec? aut quantas robusti carminis offas
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;
10tu neque anhelanti, coquitur dum massa camino,
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,
15ore teres modico, pallentis radere mores
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
20pagina turgescat, dare pondus idonea fumo.
secreti loquimur; tibi nunc hortante Camena
excutienda damus praecordia, quantaque nostrae
pars tua sit, Cornute, animae, tibi, dulcis amice,
ostendisse iuvat: pulsa, dinoscere cautus,
25quid solidum crepet et pictae tectoria linguae.
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.
30 Cum primum pavido custos mihi purpura cessit
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
35deducit trepidas ramosa in compita mentes,
me tibi supposui: teneros tu suscipis annos
Socratico, Cornute, sinu; tum fallere sollers
apposita intortos extendit regula mores,
et premitur ratione animus vincique laborat
40artificemque tuo ducit sub pollice vultum.
tecum etenim longos memini consumere soles,
et tecum primas epulis decerpere noctes:
unum opus et requiem pariter disponimus ambo,
atque verecunda laxamus seria mensa.
45non equidem hoc dubites, amborum foedere certo
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,
50Saturnumque gravem nostro Iove frangimus una:
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
55rugosum piper et pallentis grana cumini,
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,
60tunc crassos transisse dies lucemque palustrem
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
65finem animo certum miserisque viatica canis!
‘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.
70nam quamvis prope te, quamvis temone sub uno
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
75possidet. heu steriles veri, quibus una Quiritem
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
80credere tu nummos? Marco sub iudice palles?
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
85liberior Bruto?’ “Mendose colligis,” inquit
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,
90excepto si quid Masuri rubrica vetavit?’
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:
95sambucam citius caloni aptaveris alto.
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.
100diluis helleborum, certo conpescere puncto
nescius examen: vetat hoc natura medendi.
navem si poscat sibi peronatus arator,
luciferi rudis, exclamet Melicerta perisse
frontem de rebus. tibi recto vivere talo
105ars dedit, et veri speciem dinoscere calles,
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?
110iam nunc astringas, iam nunc granaria laxes,
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,
115sin tu, cum fueris nostrae paulo ante farinae,
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,
120et quid tam parvum est? sed nullo ture litabis,
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?
125an dominum ignoras, nisi quem vindicta relaxat?
‘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
130nascuntur domini, qui tu inpunitior exis
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,
135castoreum, stuppas, hebenum, tus, lubrica Coa;
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!’
140iam pueris pellem succinctus et oenophorum aptas
‘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
145intumuit, quod non exstinxerit urna cicutae?
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
150nutrieras, pergant avidos sudare deunces?
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.
155huncine, an hunc sequeris? subeas alternus oportet
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,
160cum fugit, a collo trahitur pars longa catenae.
‘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
165limen ad obscenum frangam, dum Chrysidis udas
ebrius ante fores exstincta cum face canto?’
“Euge, puer, sapias, dis depellentibus agnam
percute.” ‘Sed censen plorabit, Dave, relicta?’
“Nugaris; solea, puer, obiurgabere rubra.
170ne trepidare velis atque artos rodere casses!
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,
175non in festuca, lictor quam iactat ineptus.
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
180Herodis venere dies, unctaque fenestra
dispositae pinguem nebulam vomuere lucernae
portantes violas, rubrumque amplexa catinum
cauda natat thynni, tumet alba fidelia vino:
labra moves tacitus recutitaque sabbata palles.
185tum nigri lemures ovoque pericula rupto,
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,
190continuo crassum ridet Pulfennius ingens,
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,
5mox iuvenes agitare iocis et pollice honesto
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!
10cor iubet hoc Enni, postquam destertuit esse
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
15ditescant orti peioribus, usque recusem
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
20tingat holus siccum muria vafer in calice empta,
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.
25messe tenus propria vive et granaria, fas est,
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
30ingentes de puppe dii, iamque obvia mergis
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
35ossa inodora dabit, seu spirent cinnama surdum,
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;
40fenisecae crasso vitiarunt unguine pultes.’
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
45frigidus excutitur cinis, ac iam postibus arma,
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.
50vae, nisi conives! oleum artocreasque popello
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,
55deque avia nihilum superest, accedo Bovillas
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
60Manius hic generis prope maior avunculus exit.
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,
65quidquid id est. ubi sit, fuge quaerere, quod mihi quondam
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
70urtica et fissa fumosum sinciput aure,
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?
75vende animam lucro, mercare atque excute sollers
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.’
80In the Vita Persii, line divisions in the original text are marked |. Note that the first page break does not agree with numbering of lines on the second page.
A. Persius Flaccus natus est pridie nonas Decembris | Fabio Persico L. Vitellio coss. decessit VIII kalendas | Decembris P. Mario Asinio Gallo coss. || 5
natus est in Etruria Volaterris, eques Romanus, sanguine | et affinitate primi ordinis viris coniunctus. decessit | ad octavum miliarium in via Appia in praediis | suis.
pater eum Flaccus pupillum reliquit moriens annorum || 10 fere sex. Fulvia Sisennia mater nupsit postea | Fusio equiti Romano et eum quoque extulit inter | paucos annos.
studuit Flaccus usque ad annum XII aetatis suae | Volaterris, inde Romae apud grammaticum Remmium || 15 Palaemonem et apud rhetorem Verginium Flavum. | cum esset annorum XVI, amicitia coepit uti Annaei | Cornuti, ita ut ab eo nusquam discederet. inductus | aliquatenus in philosophiam est.
amicos habuit a prima adulescentia Caesium Bassum || 20 poetam et Calpurnium Staturam, qui vivo eo iuvenis | decessit. coluit ut patrem Servilium Nonianum. cognovit | per Cornutum etiam Annaeum Lucanum, aequaevum | auditorem Cornuti. [nam Cornutus illo tempore ||| tragicus fuit sectae stoicae. sed] Lucanus adeo mirabatur | scripta Flacci, ut vix retineret se recitantem clamore, | quin illa [esse] vera poemata diceret, etsi ipse | sua ludos faceret. sero cognovit et Senecam, sed non | ut caperetur eius ingenio. usus est apud Cornutum | duorum convictu virorum et doctissimorum et sanctissimorum, || 5 acriter tum philosophantium, Claudii Agathemeri, | medici, Lacedaemonii, et Petronii Aristocratis, | Magnetis, quos unice miratus est et aemulatus, cum aequales | essent, Cornuti minores et ipsi.
idem etiam decem fere annos summe dilectus a Paeto || 10 Thrasea est, ita ut peregrinaretur quoque cum eo aliquando, | cognatam eius Arriam habente uxorem.
fuit morum lenissimorum, verecundiae virginalis, | formae pulchrae, pietatis erga matrem et sororem et | amitam exemplo sufficientis. || 15
fuit frugi et pudicus.
reliquit circa HS vicies matri et sorori. scriptis tamen | ad matrem codicillis Cornuto rogavit ut daret sestertia, | ut quidam, centum, ut alii volunt et argenti facti | pondo viginti et libros circa septingentos Chrysippi sive || 20 bibliothecam suam omnem. verum Cornutus sublatis | libris pecuniam [sororibus, quas heredes frater fecerat] | reliquit.
et raro et tarde scripsit. hunc ipsum librum inperfectum | reliquit. versus aliqui dempti sunt ultimo libro, || 25 ut quasi finitus esset. leviter retractavit Cornutus | et Caesio Basso petenti, ut ipsi cederet, tradidit edendum. ||| scripsit etiam Flaccus in pueritia praetextam † vescio | et hodoeporicon librum unum et paucos in socrum | Thraseae [in Arriae matrem] versus, quae se | ante virum occiderat. omnia ea auctor fuit Cornutus | matri eius ut aboleret. || 5
editum librum continuo mirari et diripere homines | coepere.
decessit autem vitio stomachi anno aetatis XXX.
sed mox ut a scholis et magistris divertit, lecto libro | Lucilii decimo vehementer saturas conponere instituit. || 10 cuius libri principium imitatus est, sibi primo, mox omnibus | detracturus cum tanta recentium poetarum et oratotum | insectatione, ut etiam Neronem [illius temporis | principem] culpaverit. cuius versus in Neronem cum | ita se haberet ‘auriculas asini Mida rex habet,’ in eum || 15 modum a Cornuto, Persio iam tum mortuo, est commutatus | ‘auriculas asini quis non habet?’ ne hoc Nero in | se dictum arbitraretur.
QUINTILIANUS X, 1, 94 multum et verae gloriae | quamvis uno libro Persius meruit. || 20
MARTIALIS IV, 9, 7
Saepius in libro numeratur Persius uno,
quam levis in tota Marsus Amazonide.
IOANNES LYDUS DE MAG. I, 41 Πέρσιος δὲ | τὸν ποιητὴν Σώφρονα μιμήσασθαι θέλων τὸ Λυκόφρονος || 25 παρῆλθεν ἀμαύρον.