CHAPTER III. BIOGRAPHY OF PERSIUS-HIS SCHOOLBOY DAYS-HIS FRIENDS-HIS PURITY AND MODESTY -HIS DEFECTS AS A SATIRIST-SUBJECTS OF HIS SATIRES-OBSCURITY OF HIS STYLECOMPARED WITH HORACE-BIOGRAPHY OF JUVENAL-CORRUPTION OF ROMAN MORALS— CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ON THE SATIRES-THEIR HISTORICAL VALUE-STYLE OF JUVENAL-HE WAS THE LAST OF ROMAN SATIRISTS. AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS (BORN A. D. 34). ROMAN satire subsequently to Horace is represented by Aulus Persius Flaccus and Decimus Junius Juvenalis. Persius was a member of an equestrian family, and was born, according to the Eusebian Chronicle, A. D. 34, at Volaterræ in Etruria. He was related to the best families in Italy, and numbered amongst his kindred Arria, the noble-minded wife of Pætus. His father died when he was six years old, and his mother, Fulvia Sisenna, married a second time a Roman knight named Fusius. In a few years she was again a widow. Persius received his elementary education at his native town; but at twelve years of age he was brought to Rome, and went throught the usual course of grammar and rhetoric, under Remmius Palæmon1 and Virginius Flavus.' The former of these was, like so many men of letters, a freedman, and the son of a slave. He was, according to Suetonius,3 a man of profligate morals, but gifted with great fluency of speech, and a prodigious memory. He was rather a versifier than a poet, and, like so many modern Italians, possessed the talent of improvising. He was prosperous as a schoolmaster, considering the very small pittance which the members of that profession usually earned, for his school brought him in forty sestertia per annum (about 3251.). Virginius Flavus is only known as the author of a treatise on Rhetoric. Persius himself gives an amusing picture of his schoolboy idleness, his love of play, and his tricks to escape the hated decla mation which, in Roman schools, formed a weekly exercise:— 1 Juv. vi. 451; vii. 219. 3 De Illust. Gram. 23. Sat. iii. 44. 2 Suet. Pers. Vit. Ruperti in Juv. vii. 6 Quint. I. O. ii. 7; x. 5. SCHOOL DAYS OF PERSIUS. Sæpe oculos, memini, tangebam parvus olivo, Oft, I remember yet, my sight to spoil, For then, alas! 'twas my supreme delight What sum the lucky sice would yield in play, 357 At sixteen, Persius attached himself to the Stoic philosopher Annæus Cornutus, by whom he was imbued with the stern philosophical principles which occupy so prominent a place in his Satires. The friendship which he formed thus early in life continued until the day of his death. The young Lucan was also one of his intimate associates, whose philosophical and poetical tastes were similar to his own, and who had a profound admiration for his writings. He was acquainted with Seneca, but had no very great regard either for him or his works. Cæsius Bassus, to whom he addressed his sixth Satire, was also one of his intimates.' It redounds greatly to his honor that he enjoyed the friendship of Pætus Thrasea, one of the noblest examples of Roman virtue.2 Persius died prematurely of a disease in the stomach, at the age of twenty-eight. He left a large fortune to his mother and sister; and his library, consisting of seven hundred volumes, together with a considerable pecuniary legacy, to his beloved tutor, Cornutus. The philospher, however, disinterestedly gave up the money to the sister of his deceased friend. Quintilian (I. O. x. 96) pronounces the lyric poetry of Bassus inferior only to that of Horace; but only two lines of his poems are extant. He was destroyed by the same eruption in which Pliny the elder perished. 2 Tac. Ann. xvi. 21. Pure in mind and chaste in life, Persius was free from the corrupt taint of an immoral age. He exhibited all the self-denial, the control of the passions, and the stern, uncompromising principles of the philosophy which he admired, but not its hypocrisy. Stoicism was not, in his case, as in that of so many others, a cloak for vice and profligacy. Although Lucretius was, to a certain extent, his model, he does not attack vice with the biting severity of the old satirist. He rather adopts the caustic irony of the old Greek comedy, as more in accordance with that style of attack which he himself terms petulanti splene cachinno.1 Nor do we find in his writings the fiery ardor, the enthusiastic indignation, which burn in the verses of Juvenal; but this resulted from the tenderness of his heart and the gentleness of his disposition, and not from any disqualification for the duties of a moral instructor, such as weak moral principle, or irresolute timidity. Although he must have been conscious that the dangerous times during which his short life was passed rendered caution necessary, still it is far more probable that his purity of mind and kindliness of heart disinclined him to portray vice in its hideous and loathsome forms, and to indulge in bitterness of invective which the prevalent enormities of his times deserved. It may be questioned whether obscenities like those of Juvenal, notwithstanding purity of intention, best promote the interests of virtue. It is to be feared that often the passions are excited and the human heart rendered more corrupt by descriptions of vice, whilst the moral lesson is disregarded. Persius evidently believed that reserve and silence, or those abominations which make the pure-minded shudder with horror, and call up a blush upon the cheek of innocence, would more safely maintain the dignity and purity of virtue than the divesting himself of that virgin modesty (virgineus ille pudor) which constituted the great charm of his character. His uprightness and love of virtue are shown by the uncompromising severity with which he rebukes sins of not so deep a die; and the heart which was capable of being moulded by his example, and influenced by his purity, would have shrunk from the fearful crimes which defile the pages of Juvenal. The greatest defect in Persius, as a satirist, is that the philosophy in which he was educated rendered him too indifferent to the affairs which were going on in the world around him. Politics had little interest for him; he lived within himself a medita 1 Sat. i. 12. tive life; wealth and splendor he despised. His contemplative habits led him to criticize, as his favorite subjects, false taste in poetry, and empty pretensions to philosophy. His modest and retiring nature found little sympathy with the passions, the tumults, the business, or the pleasures which agitated Rome. He was more a student of the closet than a man of the world. Horace mingled in the society of the profligate; he considered them as fools, and laughed their folly to scorn. Juvenal looked down upon the corruption of the age from an eminence, where, involved in his virtue, he was safe from moral pollution, and punished it like an avenging deity. Persius, pure in heart and passionless by education, whilst he lashes wickedness in the abstract, almost ignores its existence, and modestly shrinks from laying bare the secret pollutions of the human heart, and from probing its vileness to the bottom. The amiability, and, above all, the disinterestedness, which characterize his Satires, fully account for the popularity which they attained immediately on their publication by Cornutus, and the panegyrics of which he was the subject in later times. "Persius," writes Quintilian,' "multum et veræ gloriæ, quamvis uno libro meruit." Many of the early Christian writers thought that his merits fully compensated for the obscurity of his style; and Gifford' observes: "The virtue he recommends, he practised in the fullest extent; and, at an age when few have acquired a determinate character, he left behind him an established reputation for genius, learning, and worth." The works of Persius are comprised within the compass of six Satires, containing, in all, about 650 lines. And, from the expression of Quintilian, already cited, and supported by a passage of Martial, there is reason to suppose that all he wrote is now extant. To his Satires is prefixed a short, but spirited introduction, in choliambics, i. e., lame iambics, in which, for the iambus, in the sixth place, there is substituted a spondee. This proemium bears but little relation to his work; but he was accustomed to similar irrelevancy in the parabases of the old Attic comedy, which he had studied. In his first Satire he exposes and accounts for the false and immoral taste which affected poetry and forensic eloquence, attacks the coxcombry of public recitation, and parodies the style of contemporary writers, in language which our ignorance of them prevents us from appreciating. In the second, which is a congratulatory address to his dear friend Macrinus, on his birthday, he embodies the subject matter 'Lib. x. 1. 2 Trans. of Juv. and Pers. vol. i. p. lxvii. Introd. of the second Alcibiades of Plato:1 a dialogue which Juvenal also had in view in the composition of his tenth Satire. In this poem, the degrading ideas which men have formed respecting the Deity, the consequent selfishness, and even impiety of their pray. ers, are followed by sentiments on the true nature of prayer, which even a Christian can read with admiration : Quin damus id superis, de magna quod dare lance No, let me bring the immortals what the race A bosom dyed in honour's noblest grain- In the third, he endeavors to shame the ingenuous youth out of an idle aversion to the pursuit of wisdom, and contrasts the enjoyments of a well-regulated mind with ignorance and sensuality: the picture which he draws of the fate of the sensualist is very powerful: Turgidus hic epulis atque albo ventre lavatur, Now to the bath, full gorged with luscious fare, Gifford. 3 Sat. iii. 98. |