exieras, ne nunc.' hic hic, quod quaerimus, hic est, non 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
Herodis venere dies, unctaque fenestra
dispositae pinguem nebulam vomuere lucernae
portantes violas, rubrumque amplexa catinum

177. uigilia. 180. uenire.

174. hic is an adverb, not a pronoun, as in festuca' shows. Quod petis, hic est' Hor. 1 Ep. 11. 29, Hic est aut nusquam, quod quaerimus' ib. 17. 39.

175. festuca, generally explained as a synonyme for vindicta' here and in Plaut. Mil. 4. I. 15 (quoted by Delph. ed.)

quid?' ean' ingenua an festuca iacta serva a libera est? The Scholiast has non in ea virga qua a lictore percutitur.' Jahn refers to Stephens' Glossary, p. 96, • Festuca, κάρφος, ῥάβδος. On the other hand, Plutarch, De S. N. Vind. p. 550, says that one of the lictors threw stubble on the manumitted slave, which would accord sufficiently well with the ordinary use of 'festuca,' as in Varro L. L. 5. 31. 38 qui homo in pratis per fenisecta festucas corradit.' Vis festucaria' occurs in Gell. 20. 10. 10. At any rate the word appears to be technical, not used rhetorically in a contemptuous sense. Casaubon says that exfestucare' occurs in the laws of the Alemanni and Saxons, and elsewhere in mediaeval Latinity.

'No symbol was of such universal application among ancient nations as the "stipula," the "festuca," the "culm," the "hawm." Thrice was the hawm to be cast when the Teuton bequeathed his land to the stranger in blood. Thrice was the hawm to be flung down before the sovereign when the lieges refused their assent to the doom; and once was the hawm to be cast up in the air before that Senior whom his lieges rejected and spurned away. To this usage, therefore, the sternly indignant Frankish Proceres resorted, proclaiming that they cast off their faith, and with one act in the open field-the field of council-did they cast

179. actum.

175

180

the hawm they no longer Charles's lieges-Charles no longer their Senior or King.' (Palgrave, Hist. of Normandy and England, vol. 2.)

ineptus, because the ceremony does not convey real freedom.

176-188. Is freedom compatible with the vanity of the political aspirant, who courts the mob and desires to be remembered for the splendour of his official shows? Or take the superstitious man, who observes Jewish ceremonies and seeks to propitiate the wrath of Isis-his bondage speaks for itself.' The instances are rather awkwardly introduced, as we might have expected that Persius, having at last found real freedom, would dwell upon it, rather than speak of other kinds of slavery. But there is spirit in the abruptness, which, at any rate, avoids the faults of formality and sameness.

176. palpo, I. 112, equiv. to ambitor.'

Corripuit,'
The man

where hiantem ' avidum.'
follows with his mouth open, expecting to
receive something. The sense of the
passage appears to be, 'Is the political
aspirant free? if so, take all the necessary
steps to gratify your ambition - these
being described in such a manner as to
show that they are really the badges of
servitude. Persius is probably imitating
the way in which Horace (1 Ep. 6) puts
the question round about the true end of
life (e. g. vv. 31 foll.) 'Virtutem verba
putas, ut Lucum ligna: cave ne portus
occupet alter:' campare also vv.
56 foll.

not even then.'

Here, here is the man we're looking for. connexion with the straw which the stupid lictor tosses about.

No

'But perhaps the maker of smooth speeches, whom the whitewashed goddess of canvassing carries along with his mouth always open, is master of himself? Oh, then, be astir early and late; overwhelm the squabbling populace with showers of vetches, that the old gentlemen of the next generation, as they prose in the sun, may have stories to tell of our feast of Flowers. Can anything be finer? But when Herod's day is come, and the lamps arranged in the greasy windows with violets to support send up their unctuous clouds, and a tunny's tail expatiates in a curled state round a red

177. cretata = 'candidata:' the gown being rubbed with chalk to make it whiter. See Isidore 19. 24.

ambitio, the goddess of canvassing,' not to be rendered ambition, though elsewhere the Latin word is nearly equivalent to the English.

vigila seems to be like 'lucet, eamus Hor. 1 Ep. 6. 56. Be on the move early and late,' the requirements of a canvass being apparently as exacting as those of dependence on the great and wealthy. Juv. 3. 127 foll., 5. 19 foll.

cicer. In cicere atque faba bona tu perdasque lupinis' Hor. 2 S. 3. 182. A plebeian article of food. Hor. A. P. 249 'fricti ciceris... et nucis emtor.' Tickets for shows, money, etc. used to be scrambled for. Mart. 8. 78, Suet. Dom. 4.

178. rixanti, 'squabbling for a thing,' 'multo cum sanguine saepe Rixantes' Lucr. 6. 1286, of those who struggled for funeral piles during the plague.

nostra, like eamus Hor. 1 Ep. 6. 56, the poet identifying himself with the person addressed 'celebrated in our aedileship.'

Floralia, Dict. Antiq.

179. aprici apricantes,' like' apricis mergis' Virg. Aen. 5. 128. The old men delight in basking, like the old women, 4. 18, 19.

at. Jahn supposes the meaning to be that the successful political aspirant, apparently free, is really a slave to superstition; but it is evident that Persius means to mark two kinds of slavery, not one only. Whether he intends that the same person is a slave in several respects is not clear the second person is used here, as in various other places in the Satire, but we need only suppose that he

means to touch his auditor's conscience in
one part, if he fails to do so in others.
So the end of Satires 3 and 4. At the
same time there is nothing incongruous in
representing men of worldly eminence as
slaves to superstition. Horace, in his
various mentions of Judaism, evidently
implies that it was spreading, talked of
among the higher orders, if not favoured by
them. The account in the latter part of
Juv. Sat. 6 looks the same way. [Comp.
an often-quoted fragment of Seneca ap.
Augustin. Civ. D. 6. 11 'Cum interim usque
eo sceleratissimae gentis' (Judaeorum)
'consuetudo convaluit, ut per omnes iam
terras recepta sit: victi victoribus leges
dederunt.' A case of a noble Roman lady
converted to Judaism in the reign of
Tiberius is mentioned by Josephus Ant.
18. 3 (4).]

180. Herodis . . dies seems to be Herod's birthday, which would naturally be celebrated by the Herodians.

fenestra. Lights were set up on doors and windows on festivals. Juv. 12. 91 foll., and Mayor's note. Jahn refers to Jos. Ant. 12. 11, Sen. Ep. 95-compared by Casaubon to show that it was a Jewish custom. Comp. Tertull. Apol. 35' cur die laeto non.. lucernis diem infringimus?'

181. pinguem nebulam vomuere is illustrated by Tertull. 1. c. ' clarissimis lucernis vestibula nebulabant' (where however another reading is 'enubilabant,' which would agree better with 'clarissimis'), Sen. 1. c. nec lumine di egent et ne homines quidem delectantur fuligine.'

182. violas, another mark of rejoicing. Juv. 12. 90 'omnes violae iactabo colores.

amplexa catinum, 'coiled round the dish,' indicating the size of the I

cauda natat thynni, tumet alba fidelia vino: labra moves tacitus recutitaque sabbata palles. tum 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, continuo crassum ridet Pulfennius ingens, et centum Graecos curto centusse licetur.

dish, and the white jar is bulging with wine, you move your lips in silence and turn pale at the circumcised sabbath. Then there are black hobgoblins and the perils of the broken eggshell; there are the big orders of Cybele, and the one-eyed priestess with her timbrel, hammering into you gods who make your body swell all over, unless you have taken the prescribed morning dose, three mouthfuls of a head of garlic.'

Talk in this way among the military gentlemen with the large calves, that great overgrown Pulfennius breaks into a horse-laugh in your face, and offers a clipped hundred-as piece for a lot of a hundred Greeks.

to show that blindness was a special visitation from Isis. Hence the priestess is supposed to be called lusca, as having herself felt the wrath of the goddess. Visconti (Mus. Pio. Cl. 3. p. 60 foll.) ap. Jahn speaks of two seals which represent Egyptian priests as one-eyed.

187. 'Incutere metum, terrorem, formidinem, religionem,' are all found. See Freund. Persius, as is his wont, strengthens the expression. Compare Virg. Aen. 5. 679 excussaque pectore Iuno est; id. 6. 78 'magnum si pectore possit Excussisse deum.'

inflantis, seemingly of the swelling of the whole body by disease, as in 2. 14., 3. 95, rather than of ulcers. The present participle seems to express the habit, so that inflantis si non gustaveris' 'qui inflabunt si non gustaveris.'

=

precious truth is laughed down,' or defiantly, All this is true, though, or even because the soldiers laugh at it,' is not easy to see.

189. See 3. 77 note.

varicosos. • Varicosus fiet haruspex' Juv. 6. 397, from being always on his legs. So here the soldiers, from being always on the move. 'Grandes magna ad subsellia surae' Juv. 16. 14, of the military. Compare ib. 24., 3. 248.

190. crassum ridet, like subrisit molle' 3. 110. Horace's dulce ridere,'

'ridere decorum.'

ridet, as in 3. 89.

Pulfennius, one of a number of varieties presented by the MSS., is preferred by Jahn on the authority of an inscription in Murat. p. 816, 7.

ingens, like 'torosa iuventus' 3. 89, 'caloni alto' v. 95.

191. Compare 3. 79.

·

Graecos, like doctores Graios' 6. 38, contemptuously, philosophy being hated not only for its own sake but as a foreign importation.

curto, he will not even bid a whole centussis, but only a clipped coin. The abl. of price. Compare Plaut. Capt. 2. 2. 24Eugepae ! Thalem talento non

emam Milesium.'

SATURA VI.

ADMOVIT iam bruma foco te, Basse, Sabino? iamne lyra et tetrico vivunt tibi pectine chordae ? mire opifex numeris veterum primordia vocum atque marem strepitum fidis intendisse Latinae, mox iuvenes agitare iocos et pollice honesto egregius lusisse senes. mihi nunc Ligus ora intepet hibernatque meum mare, qua latus ingens