PERSIUS
It is possible to form a clearer picture of the personality of Aulus
Persius Flaccus, the satirist, than of any other poet of the Silver Age.
Not only are the essential facts of his brief career preserved for us in
a concise, but extremely relevant biography taken from the commentary of
the famous critic Valerius Probus, but there are few poets whose works
so clearly reveal the character of their author.
Persius was born at the lofty hill-town of Volaterrae, in Tuscany, on
the 4th of December, 34 A.D.[217] He was scarcely six years old when he
lost his father, a wealthy Roman knight, named Flaccus. His mother,
Fulvia Sisennia, married again, but her second husband, a knight named
Fusius, died after a few years of wedded life. Persius was educated at
home up to the age of twelve, when he was taken to Rome to be taught
literature by Remmius Palaemon and rhetoric by Verginius Flavus. Of the
latter nothing is known save that he wrote a much-approved textbook on
rhetoric and was exiled by Nero;[218] the former was a freedman whose
remarkable talents were only equalled by his gross vices; he had a
prodigious memory, was a skilful _improvvisatore_, and the most
distinguished teacher of the day.[219] At the age of sixteen, shortly
after his assumption of the _toga virilis_, the young Persius made the
friendship which was to be the ruling influence of his life. He learned
to know and love the great Stoic teacher, Cornutus, with an attachment
that was broken only by death. It was from Cornutus that he imbibed the
principles of Stoicism, and at his house that he met the Greek
philosophers, Petronius Aristocrates of Magnesia and the Lacedaemonian
physician, Claudius Agathurnus, whose influence upon his character was
only less than that of Cornutus. Among his intimates he counted
Calpurnius Statura, who died in early youth, and the famous lyric poet,
Caesius Bassus,[220] who was destined long to survive his friend and to
do him the last service of editing the satires, which his premature
death left unpublished and unfinished. Lucan also was one of his fellow
students in the house of Cornutus,[221] while at a later date he made
the acquaintance of Seneca, the leading writer of the day, although he
never felt the seductive attractions of his fluent style and subtle
intellect. More important influences were his almost filial respect and
affection for the distinguished orator,[222] M. Servilius Nonianus, and
his close companionship with Thrasea Paetus, the leader of the Stoic
opposition.[223] At one time Persius, if the scholiast may be
believed,[224] contemplated a military career. The statement is scarcely
probable in view of the contempt and dislike with which he invariably
speaks of soldiers, nor is it easy to conceive a profession less suited
to the temperament of the quiet and retiring poet. Whatever his original
intentions may have been, he actually chose the secluded life of study,
the _vita umbratilis_, as the Romans called it, remote from the dust and
heat of the great world. That he was wise we cannot doubt. It was the
only life possible in those days for a man of his character. 'Fuit morum
lenissimorum, verecundiae virginalis, pietatis erga matrem et sororem et
amitam exemplo sufficientis: fuit frugi, pudicus.' Even in a saner,
purer, and less turbulent age, such a one would have been more fitted
for the paths of study than for any branch of public life. He died of a
disease of the stomach on the 24th of November, 62 A.D., in his villa on
the Appian Way, some eight miles south of Rome,[225] leaving behind him
a valuable library, a small amount of unpublished verse, and a
considerable fortune, amounting to 2,000,000 sesterces. The whole of
this fortune he bequeathed to his mother and sister, only begging them
to give to his friend Cornutus a sum of 100,000 sesterces, twenty pounds
weight of silver plate, and the whole of his library, containing no less
than 700 volumes by the Stoic Chrysippus. Cornutus accepted the books,
but refused the rest, showing that indifference to wealth that was to be
looked for, though not always to be found, in professors of the Stoic
philosophy. The literary work left by the dead poet was submitted by his
mother to the judgement of Cornutus, himself a poet.[226] The bulk of
the work was not great. Persius had in his boyhood written a _praetexta_
or tragedy with a Roman plot, a book of poems describing his journeys
with Thrasea,[227] and a few verses on his kinswoman Arria, the wife of
Caecina Paetus, immortalized by her devotion to her husband and her
heroic death.[228] As the work of his maturer years he left his satires.
Cornutus recommended that all save the satires should be destroyed; they
alone, unfinished though they might be, were worthy of the memory of his
dead friend. He began the task of correcting them for publication, but
transferred it to Caesius Bassus, at the latter's earnest entreaty. Of
the nature of the correction and editing required we are ignorant, save
for the statement of Probus that a few lines were removed from the end
of the book to give it an appearance of completion.[229] The poems met
with instant success;[230] they excited both wonder and criticism; that
they continued to be read is shown by the existence of copious scholia,
which must, indeed, have been almost necessary for such continuance of
their popularity.[231]
The slender volume of Persius' works is composed of six satires in
hexameter verse and a prologue written in choliambi. The first deals
with the corruption of literature; the second, addressed to Macrinus on
his birthday, treats of the right and wrong objects of prayer; the third
is an appeal to an indolent young man for energy and earnestness; the
fourth, almost a continuation of the third, attacks the lack of
'self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control', in public men; the
fifth, addressed to his friend and teacher Cornutus, maintains the Stoic
doctrine that all the world are slaves; only the righteous man attains
to freedom; in the sixth, addressed to Caesius Bassus, the poet claims
the right to spend his wealth in reasonable enjoyment, and denounces the
grasping and unseemly selfishness of an imaginary heir to his fortune.
In the prologue--or epilogue as it is sometimes regarded[232]--he
sarcastically disclaims any pretensions to poetic inspiration, and hints
ironically that, in view of the number of poets who write merely to win
their bread, inspiration may be regarded as unnecessary.
The ambition to win fame as a satirist was first fired in Persius by his
reading the tenth book of the satires of Lucilius. If we may believe
Probus, he imitated the opening of that book in his first satire,
beginning like Lucilius by detracting from himself and proceeding to
attack other authors indiscriminately.[233] Not enough of the tenth book
of Lucilius has survived to enable us to check the accuracy of this
statement, though it finds independent testimony in a remark of the
scholiast on Horace, that the tenth book of Lucilius contained free
criticisms of the early poets of Rome.[234] Further, the third satire is
said by the scholiast to have been modelled on the fourth book of
Lucilius, and there is a certain amount of evidence for supposing the
choliambi of the epilogue to be an imitation of a Lucilian model.[235]
We have, however, no means of testing the truth of these assertions: the
debt of Persius to Lucilius must be taken on trust. Of his enormous
indebtedness to Horace we have, on the other hand, the clearest
evidence. It is hard to conceive two poets with less in common as
regards ideals, temperament, and technique; and yet throughout Persius
we are startled by strange, though unmistakable, echoes of Horace.
He knows his Horace by heart, and Horace has become a veritable
obsession. He is not content with giving his characters Horatian
names.[236] That might be convention, not plagiarism. But phrase after
phrase calls up the Horatian original. He runs through the whole gamut
of plagiarism. There is plagiarism, simple and direct.
O si
sub rastro crepet argenti mihi seria, dextro
Hercule! (2. 10)
O that I could hear a crock of silver chinking under
my harrow, by the blessing of Hercules. CONINGTON.
is undisguisedly copied from Horace (_Sat._ ii. 6. 10).
O si urnam argenti fors quae mihi monstret, ut illi,
thesauro invento, qui mercennarius agrum
ilium ipsum mercatus aravit, dives amico
Hercule!
But as a rule, since he cannot keep Horace out, he strives to disguise
him. The familiar
si vis me flere, dolendum est
primum ipsi tibi
of the _Ars Poetica_ (102) reappears in the far less natural
verum nec nocte paratum
plorabit, qui me volet incurvasse querela (_Pers_. i. 91).
A man's tears must come from his heart at the moment, not
from his brains overnight, if he would have me bowed down
beneath his piteous tale. CONINGTON.
He speaks of his verses so finely turned and polished--
ut per leve severos
effundat iunctura unguis (i. 64).
So that the critical nail runs glibly along even where the
parts join. CONINGTON.
In this fantastically contorted and affected phrase we may espy an
ingenious blending of two Horatian phrases,
totus teres atque rotundus,
externi ne quid valeat per leve morari (_Sat._ ii. 7. 86),
and the simple
ad unguem factus
f _Sat._ i. 5. 32.[237]
There is no need to multiply instances. Horace appears everywhere, but
_quantum mutatus ab illo!_ As the result of this particular method of
borrowing, assisted by affectations and obscurities which are all his
own, Persius attains to a kind of spurious originality of diction, which
often degenerates into sheer eccentricity. In spite of the fact that the
original text can almost everywhere be reconstructed with certainty, he
is almost the most obscure of Latin poets to the modern reader. A few
instances will suffice. There were, it appears, three ways of mocking a
person behind his back: one might tap the fingers against the lower
portion of the hand in imitation of a stork's beak, one might imitate a
donkey's ears, or one might put out one's tongue. When Persius wishes to
say 'Janus, I envy you your luck, for no one can mock at you behind your
back!' he writes (i. 58):
O Iane, a tergo quem nulla ciconia pinsit,
nec manus auriculas imitari mobilis albas,
nec linguae, quantum sitiat canis Apula, tantae.
Happy Janus, whom no stork's bill batters from behind,
no nimble hand quick to imitate the ass's white ears,
no long tongues thrust out like the tongue of a thirsty
Apulian bitch.
The obscurity of the first line springs in part from the fact that the
custom is not elsewhere spoken of. The second line may pass. The third
defies literal translation. It means 'no long tongues thrust out like
the tongue of a thirsty Apulian bitch'. But the omission of all mention
both of 'protrusion' and of the 'dog days' makes the Latin almost
without meaning. The epithet _Apula_ becomes absurd. A 'thirsty Apulian
dog' is barely sufficient to suggest the midsummer drought of Apulia.
This is an extreme case; it is perhaps fairer to quote lines such as
si puteal multa cautus vibice flagellas (iv. 49),
'if in your zeal for the main chance you flog the exchange with many a
stripe,' a mysterious passage generally supposed to mean 'if you exact
exorbitant usury'. A little less enigmatic, but fully as forced and
unnatural is
dum veteres avias tibi de pulmone revello (v. 92),
'while I pull your old grandmotherly views from your heart,' or the
extraordinarily harsh metaphor of the first satire (24)--
quo didicisse, nisi hoc fermentum et quae semel intus
innata est rupto iecore exierit caprificus?
What is the good of past study, unless this leaven--unless
the wild fig-tree which has once struck its root into the
breast, break through and come out? CONINGTON.
which means nothing more than 'What is the good of study unless a man
brings out what he has in him?' A far more serious source of obscurity,
however, is his obscurity of thought. Even when the sense of individual
lines has been discovered, it is often difficult to see the drift of the
passage as a whole. Logical development is perhaps not to be expected in
the 'hotch-potch' of the 'satura'. But one has a right to demand that
the transitions should be easy and the drift of the argument clear. This
Persius refuses us. The difficulties which he presents are--as in the
case of Robert Browning--in part due to his adoption of the traditional
dramatic form in satire, a form in which clearness of expression is as
difficult as it is desirable. But we cannot excuse his obscurity as we
sometimes can in Browning--either as being to some extent a realistic
representation of the discursiveness and lack of method that
characterize the reasonings of the average intelligent man, or on the
other hand as springing from the intensity of the poet's thought. It is
not the case with Persius that his thoughts press so thick and quick
upon him, or are of so deep and complicated a character, as to be
incapable of simple and lucid expression. It is sheer waywardness and
perversity springing from the absence of true artistic feeling to which
we must attribute this cardinal defect. For his thought is commonplace,
and his observation of the minds and ways of men is limited.
The qualities that go to the making of the true satirist are many. He
must be dominated by a moral ideal, not necessarily of the highest kind,
but sufficiently exalted to lend dignity to his work and sufficiently
strongly realized to permeate it. He must have a wide and comprehensive
knowledge of his fellow men. A knowledge of the broad outlines of the
cardinal virtues and of the deadly sins is not sufficient. The satirist
must know them in their countless manifestations in the life of man, as
they move our awe or our contempt, our admiration or our terror, our
love or our loathing, our laughter or our tears. He must be able to
paint society in all its myriad hues. He must have a sense of humour,
even if he lacks the sense of proportion; he must have the gift of
laughter, even though his laughter ring harsh and painful. He must have
the gift of mordant speech, of epigram, and of rhetoric. He must drive
his points home with directness and lucidity. Mere denunciation of vice
is not enough. Few prophets are satirists; few satirists are prophets.
Of these qualities Persius has all too few. The man who has become the
pupil of a Cornutus at the age of sixteen, who has shunned a public
career, and is characterized by a _virginalis verecundia_, is not
likely, even in a long life, to acquire the knowledge of the world
required for genuine satire. The satirist, it might almost be said, must
not only have walked abroad in the great world, but must have passed
through the fire himself, and in some sense experienced the vices he has
set himself to lash. But Persius is young and, as far as might be in
that age, innocent. His outlook is from the seclusion of literary and
philosophic circles, and his satire lacks the peculiar vigour that can
only be got from jostling one's way in the wider world. In consequence
the picture of life which he presents lacks vividness. A few brilliant
sketches there are; but they are drawn from but a narrow range of
experience. There is nothing better of its kind than the description in
the first satire of the omnipresent poetaster of the reign of Nero, with
his affected recitations of tawdry, sensuous, and soulless verse (15):
Scilicet haec populo pexusque togaque recenti
et natalicia tandem cum sardonyche albus
sede leges celsa, liquido cum plasmate guttur
mobile conlueris, patranti fractus ocello.
tunc neque more probo videas nec voce serena
ingentis trepidare Titos, cum carmina lumbum
intrant et tremulo scalpuntur ubi intima versu.
Yes--you hope to read this out some day, got up sprucely with
a new toga, all in white, with your birthday ring on at last,
perched up on a high seat, after gargling your supple throat by
a liquid process of tuning, with a languishing roll of your
wanton eye. At this you may see great brawny sons of Rome all in
a quiver, losing all decency of gesture and command of voice, as
the strains glide into their very bones, and the marrow within is
tickled by the ripple of the measure. CONINGTON.
A few lines later comes a similar and equally vivid picture (30):
ecce inter pocula quaerunt
Romulidae saturi, quid dia poemata narrent.
hic aliquis, cui circum umeros hyacinthina laena est,
rancidulum quiddam balba de nare locutus,
Phyllidas Hypsipylas, vatum et plorabile siquid,
cliquat ac tenero subplantat verba palato.
Listen. The sons of Rome are sitting after a full meal, and
inquiring in their cups, 'What news from the divine world of
poesy?' Hereupon a personage with a hyacinth-coloured mantle
over his shoulders brings out some mawkish trash or other, with
a snuffle and a lisp, something about Phyllises or Hypsipyles,
or any of the many heroines over whom poets have snivelled,
filtering out his tones and tripping up the words against the
roof of his delicate mouth. CONINGTON.
Here the poet is describing what he has seen; in the world of letters he
is at home. He can laugh pungently enough at the style of oratory
prevailing in the courts--
nilne pudet capiti non posse pericula cano
pellere, quin tepidum hoc optes audire 'decenter'.
'fur es', ait Pedio. Pedius quid? crimina rasis
librat in antithetis, doctas posuisse figuras
laudatur, 'bellum hoc?' (i. 83).
Are you not ashamed not to be able to plead against perils
threatening your grey hairs, but you must needs be ambitious
of hearing mawkish compliments to your 'good taste'? The
accuser tells Pedius point blank, 'You are a thief.' What does
Pedius do? Oh, he balances the charges in polished antitheses--
he is deservedly praised for the artfulness of his tropes.
Monstrous fine that! CONINGTON.
He can parody the decadent poets with their effeminate rhythms and their
absurdities of speech.[238] He can mock the archaizer who goes to Accius
and Pacuvius for his inspiration.[239] He can give an admirable summary
of the genius of Lucilius and Horace--
secuit Lucilius urbem,
te 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 (i. 114).
Lucilius bit deep into the town of his day, its Lupuses and
Muciuses, and broke his jaw-tooth on them. Horace, the rogue,
manages to probe every fault while making his friend laugh; he
gains his entrance and plays about the heartstrings with a sly
talent for tossing up his nose and catching the public on it.
CONINGTON.
But the first satire stands alone _qua_ satire. It is not, perhaps, the
most interesting to the modern reader. It mocks at empty literary
fashions, which have comparatively small human interest. But it is in
this satire that Persius comes nearest the true satirist. The obscurity
and affectation of its language is its one serious fault; otherwise it
shows sound literary ideals, close observation, and a pretty vein of
humour. Elsewhere there is small trace of keen observation[240] of
actual life; he calls up before his reader no vision of the varied life
of Rome, whether in the streets or in the houses of the rich. Instead,
he laboriously tricks out some vice in human garb, converses with it in
language such as none save Persius ever dreamed of using, or scourges it
with all the heavy weapons of the Stoic armoury. There is at times a
certain violence and even coarseness[241] of description which does duty
for realism, but the words ring hollow and false. The picture described
or suggested is got at second-hand. He lacks the vivacity, realism, and
common sense of Horace, the cultured man of the world, the biting wit,
the astonishing descriptive power, and the masterly rhetoric of Juvenal.
We care little for the greater part of Persius' disquisition[242] on the
trite theme of the schools, 'what should be the object of man's prayers
to heaven?' when we have read the tenth satire of Juvenal. There is the
same commonplace theme in both, and there is perhaps less originality to
be found in the general treatment applied to it by Juvenal. But Juvenal
makes us forget the triteness of the theme by his extraordinary gift of
style. Like Victor Hugo, he has the gift of imparting richness and
splendour to the obvious by the sheer force and glory of his declamatory
power. Similarly the fifth satire, where Persius descants on the theme
that only the good man is free, while all the rest are slaves, compares
ill as a whole with the dialogue between Horace and Davus on the same
subject (_Sat._ ii. 7). There is such a harshness, an angularity and
bitterness about it, that he wholly fails of the effect produced by the
easy dignity of the earlier poet. It is abrupt, violent, and obscure;
and for this reason the austere Stoic makes less impression than his
more engaging and easy-going predecessor. Horace knew how to press home
his points, even while he played about the hearts of men. Persius has
neither the persuasiveness of Horace nor the force of Juvenal.
But Persius, if he falls below his great rivals in point of art, is in
one respect immeasurably their superior. He is a better and a nobler
man. In his denunciations of vice his eyes are set on a more exalted
ideal, an ideal from which he never wanders. There is a world of
difference between the 'golden mean' of Horace, and the worship of
virtue that redeems the obscurities of Persius. There is a still greater
gulf between the high scorn manifested by Persius for all that is base
and ignoble, and the fierce, almost petulant, indignation of Juvenal,
that often seems to rend for the mere delight of rending, and is at
times disfigured by such grossness of language that many an
unsympathetic reader has wondered whether the indignation was genuine.
Neither Horace nor Juvenal ever rose to the moral heights of the
conclusion of the second satire (61):
O curvae in terris animae et caelestium inanes,
quid iuvat hoc, templis nostros immittere mores
et bona dis ex hac scelerata ducere pulpa?
haec sibi corrupto casiam dissolvit olivo
et 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?
nempe hoc quod Veneri donatae a virgine pupae.
quin damus id superis, de magna quod dare lance
non possit magni Messalae lippa propago?
compositum ius fasque animo sanctosque recessus
mentis et incoctum generoso pectus honesto:
haec cedo ut admoveam templis et farre litabo.
O ye souls that cleave to earth and have nothing heavenly
in you! How can it answer to introduce the spirit of the age
into the temple-service and infer what the gods like from
this sinful pampered flesh of ours? The flesh it is that has
got to spoil wholesome oil by mixing casia with it--to steep
Calabrian wool in purple that was made for no such use; that
has made us tear the pearl from the oyster, and separate the
veins of the glowing ore from the primitive slag. It sins--yes,
it sins; but it takes something by its sinning; but you,
reverend pontiffs, tell us what good gold can do in a holy
place. Just as much or as little as the dolls which a young
girl offers to Venus. Give _we_ rather to the gods such an
offering as great Messala's blear-eyed representative has no
means of giving, even out of his great dish--duty to God and
man well blended in the mind--purity in the shrine of the heart,
and a manly flavour of nobleness pervading the bosom. Let me
have these to carry to the temple, and a handful of meal shall
win me acceptance. CONINGTON.
This is real enthusiasm, though the theme be trite, and it is
noteworthy that the enthusiasm has clarified the language, which goes
straight to the point without obscurity or circumlocution. Here alone
does the second satire of Persius surpass the more famous tenth satire
of Juvenal. Yet even this fine outburst is surpassed by the deservedly
well-known passage of the third satire, in which Persius appeals to a
young man 'who has great possessions' to live earnestly and
strenuously (23):
udum et molle lutum es, nunc nunc properandus et acri
fingendus sine fine rota. sed rure paterno
est tibi far modicum, purum et sine labe salinum
(quid metuas?) cultrixque foci secura patella est.
hoc satis? an deceat pulmonem rumpere ventis,
stemmate quod Tusco ramum millesime ducis,
censoremve tuum vel quod trabeate salutas?
ad 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
demersus summa rursus non bullit in unda.
magne pater divum, saevos punire tyrannos
haut alia ratione velis, cum dira libido
moverit ingenium ferventi tincta veneno:
virtutem videant intabescantque relicta.
anne magis Siculi gemuerunt aera iuvenci,
et magis auratis pendens laquearibus ensis
purpureas subter cervices terruit, 'imus,
imus praecipites' quam si sibi dicat et intus
palleat infelix quod proxima nesciat uxor?
You are moist soft earth, you ought to be taken instantly,
instantly, and fashioned without end by the rapid wheel. But you
have a paternal estate with a fair crop of corn, a salt-cellar
of unsullied brightness (no fear of ruin surely!), and a snug
dish for fireside service. Are you to be satisfied with this? or
would it be decent to puff yourself and vapour because your branch
is connected with a Tuscan stem, and you are thousandth in the line,
or because you wear purple on review days and salute your censor?
Off with your trappings to the mob! I can look under them and see
your skin. Are you not ashamed to live the loose life of Natta? But he
is paralysed by vice; his heart is overgrown by thick collops of fat;
he feels no reproach; he knows nothing of his loss; he is sunk in the
depth and makes no more bubbles on the surface. Great Father of the
Gods, be it thy pleasure to inflict no other punishment on the monsters
of tyranny, after their nature has been stirred by fierce passion, that
has the taint of fiery poison--let them look upon virtue and pine that
they have lost her for ever! Were the groans from the brazen bull of
Sicily more terrible, or did the sword that hung from the gilded cornice
strike more dread into the princely neck beneath it, than the voice
which whispers to the heart, 'We are going, going down a precipice,' and
the ghastly inward paleness, which is a mystery, even to the wife of our
heart? CONINGTON.
The man who wrote this has 'loved righteousness and hated iniquity'. In
the work of Persius' rivals it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that
it is the hatred of iniquity that is most prominent; the love of
righteousness holds but a secondary place.
Persius is uncompromising; he is the true Stoic with the motto 'all or
nothing'. But he has nothing of the stilted Stoicism that is such a
painful feature of the plays of Seneca; nor, however perverse and
affected he may be in diction, do we ever feel that his Stoicism is in
some respects no better than a moral pose, a distressing feeling that
sometimes afflicts as we read Seneca's letters or consolatory treatises.
He speaks straight from the heart. His faults are more often the faults
of the school of philosophy than of the schools of rhetoric. The young
Lucan is said to have exclaimed, after hearing a recitation given by
Persius:[243] 'That is real poetry, my verses are mere _jeux d'esprit_.'
If we take Persius at his noblest, Lucan's criticism is just. In these
passages not only is the thought singularly pure and noble, and the
expression felicitous, but the actual metre represents almost the
high-water mark of the post-Vergilian hexameter. Here, as in other
writers of the age, the influence of Ovid is traceable in the increase
of dactyls and the avoidance of elision. But the verse has a swing and
dignity, together with a variety, that can hardly be found in any other
poetry of the Silver Age. It is the existence of passages such as
these, and the high unswerving moral enthusiasm characterizing all his
work, that have made Persius live through the centuries. It is
fashionable for the critic to say, 'We lay down Persius with a sigh of
relief.' That is true, but we feel the better for reading him. He is
one of the few writers of Rome whose personality awakens a feeling of
warm affection. He was a rigid Stoic, yet not proud or cold. In an age
of almost universal corruption he kept himself unspotted from the
world. He had a rare capacity for whole-hearted friendship. If his
teacher Cornutus had never made another convert, and his preaching had
been vain, it would have been ample reward to have won such a tribute
of affection and gratitude as the lines in which Persius pours forth
his soul to him (v. 21):
tibi nunc hortante Camena
excutienda damus praecordia, quantaque nostrae
pars tua sit, Cornute, animae, tibi, dulcis amice,
ostendisse iuvat. pulsa dinoscere cautus
quid solidum crepet et pictae tectoria linguae.
hic ego centenas ausim deposcere fauces,
ut quantum mihi te sinuoso in pectore fixi,
voce traham pura, totumque hoc verba resignent,
quod latet arcana non enarrabile fibra.
cum primum pavido custos mihi purpura cessit
bullaque subcinctis Laribus donata pependit,
cum blandi comites totaque inpune Subura
permisit sparsisse oculos iam candidus umbo,
cumque iter ambiguum est et vitae nescius error
deducit trepidas ramosa in compita mentes,
me tibi supposui. teneros tu suscipis annos
Socratico, Cornute, sinu. tune fallere sollers
adposita intortos extendit regula mores,
et premitur ratione animus vincique laborat
artificemque 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.
non 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,
Saturnumque gravem nostro Iove frangimus una:
nescio quod certe est quod me tibi temperat astrum.
It is to you, at the instance of the muse within me, that I
would offer my heart to be sifted thoroughly; my passion is to
show you, Cornutus, how large a share of my inmost being is
yours, my beloved friend; strike it, use every test to tell what
rings sound, and what is the mere plaster of a varnished tongue.
An occasion indeed it is for which I may well venture to ask a
hundred voices, that I may bring out in clear utterance how
thoroughly I have lodged you in the very corners of my breast, and
unfold in words all the unutterable feelings which lie entwined
deep down among my heart-strings. When first the guardianship of the
purple ceased to awe me and the band of boyhood was hung up as an
offering to the quaint old household gods, when my companions made
themselves pleasant, and the folds of my gown, now white, the stripe
of purple gone, left me free to cast my eyes at will over the whole
Subura--just when the way of life begins to be uncertain, and the
bewildered mind finds that its ignorant ramblings have brought it to
a point where roads branch off--then it was that I made myself your
adopted child. You at once received the young foundling into the
bosom of a second Socrates; and soon your rule, with artful surprise,
straightens the moral twists that it detects, and my spirit becomes
moulded by reason and struggles to be subdued, and assumes plastic
features under your hand. Aye, I mind well how I used to wear away
long summer suns with you, and with you pluck the early bloom of the
night for feasting. We twain have one work and one set time for rest,
and the enjoyment of a moderate table unbends our gravity. No, I would
not have you doubt that there is a fixed law that brings our lives
into one accord, and one star that guides them. Whether it be in the
equal balance that truthful Destiny hangs our days, or whether the
birth-hour sacred to faithful friends shares our united fates between
the Heavenly Twins, and we break the shock of Saturn together by the
common shield of Jupiter, some star, I am assured, there is which
fuses me with you. CONINGTON.
There is a sincerity about these beautiful lines that is as rare as it
is welcome in the poetry of this period. Much may be forgiven to the
poet who could write thus, even though rarely. And it must be remembered
that Persius is free from the worst of the besetting sins of his age,
the love of rhetorical brilliance at the expense of sense, a failing
that he criticizes with no little force in his opening satire. His
harshness and obscurity are due in part to lack of sufficient literary
skill, but still more to his attempt to assert his originality against
the insistent obsession of the satires of Horace. As in the case of so
many of his contemporaries, his literary fame must depend in the main on
his 'purple patches'.
But he does what few of his fellow poets do; he leaves a vivid
impression of his personality, and reveals a genuine moral ardour and
nobility of character that refuse to be clouded or hidden by his dark
sayings and his perverse obscurity.