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A. PERSII FLACCI

SATIRE.

[SAT. III. V. 1—2.

NEMPE hæc assidue! Jam clarum mane fenestras Intrat, et angustas extendit lumine rimas :

VER. 1. What! ever thus ?] From the manner in which the speaker announces himself, it would seem as if he were a kind of domestick instructor, engaged perhaps, to complete the education of the young nobility who had passed through the usual discipline of the schools. Tutors of this description were invested with considerable authority, and assumed, as here, a lofty and decisive tone. With the decay of literature, and the empire, their importance diminished; and A. Gellius has a passage in which Taurus, one of these masters of philosophy, notices their fallen state in very significant terms: "Nunc, inquit, videre est philosophos ultro currere, ut doceant, ad foras juvenum divitum, eosque ibi sedere atque operiri prope ad meridiam, donec discipuli nocturnum omne vinum edormiant." lib. x. c. 6. The opening of this Satire, in Sheridan's translation, is the perfection of absurdity.

VER. 4. On the fifth line the gnomon's shadow falls.] Holyday has a long and learned note on this subject. "The Romans (he says) greatly differed from us in the division of the day; for we use a civil day, i. e. the space of day and night, which we divide into twenty-four equal parts, whereas they used a natural day, which is the space from the sun rising to the sun setting, as Censorinus shews, De Die Nat. c. 24.; so that their

SATIRES

OF

PERSIUS.

[SAT. III. V. 1-4.

WHAT! ever thus? See! while the beams of day,
In broad effulgence, o'er the shutters play,
Stream through the crevice, widen on the walls,
On the fifth line the gnomon's shadow falls!

hours varied according to the season of the year." At this time, therefore," when the dog-star raged," and when each division of the dial must have been about one hour and one third of an hour long, the shadow fell upon the fifth line a little before eleven o'clock: this was about the hour of dining among the more sober people.

"Sosia, prandendum est; quartam jam totus in horam "Sol calet; ad quintam flectitur umbra notam.”

AUSON.

The invention of sun-dials has appeared so important, that great pains have been taken to discover the people to whose ingenuity mankind is indebted for it. The Chinese, the Mexicans, and half the barbarous and ignorant nations of the old and new world, have been complimented with it, in turn; but the great majority of the criticks seem inclined to attribute it to the Egyptians, whose pyramids and obelisks are, it seems, nothing but magnificent gnomons. The Egyptians were undoubtedly a learned people; and, if this opinion be correct, they must have

Stertimus, indomitum quod despumare Falernum
Sufficiat, quinta dum linea tangitur umbra.
En quid agis! siccas insana Canicula messes
Jamdudum coquit, et patula pecus omne sub ulmo

est.

Unus ait comitum ;

adsit

"Verumne? itane? ocyus

Huc aliquis! nemon'?"-turgescit vitrea bilis;
Finditur, Arcadia pecuaria rudere credas.

Jam liber, et bicolor positis membrana capillis, Inque manus chartæ, nodosaque venit arundo.

been fully as economical as wise. After all, the first shepherd who struck his crook into the ground, could scarcely fail to discover that he had erected a kind of sun-dial.

Tornorupæus observes, on this line, that sun-dials came into use at Rome, about the period of the first Punick war; they were, he adds, at that time, sufficiently rude and imperfect :— cum prius ortus et occasus postmodo meridiei ratio haberetur. A fact taken from Pliny, who gives it much fuller and better. Lib. vii. c. 60. When the Romans had found out that these were not much to be depended on in cloudy weather, Scipio Nassica taught them the use of clepsydræ or water-clocks; a homely contrivance, as the critick represents it: but with which they were content for ages.

VER. 9. Here my youth rouses.] See the note p. xiv. “It is eagerly contested (says M. Raoul) whether the words Unus ait comitum, are to be understood of one of the pupils of the governor, or one of the governors of the pupil. At any rate, they are an absolute riddle. Instead, therefore, of deciding between Casaubon and Britannicus, I have judged it wiser to follow the example of Monti, and omit them altogether." And thus Persius is translated! For the droves of Arcadia, see Juvenal,.

Yet still you sleep, and, idly stretch'd supine,
Snore off the fumes of strong Falernian wine :
Up! up! mad Sirius parches every blade,
And flocks and herds lie panting in the shade.
Here my youth rouses, rubs his heavy eyes;
"Is it so late? so very late?" he cries.

"Shame, shame! Who waits? Who waits there? quick, my page!"

His mounting bile o'erflows; he foams with rage,
And brays so loudly, that you start in fear,
And fancy all Arcadia at your ear!

Behold him now, array'd in careless haste, (Books, parchment, paper, pens before him placed,)

:

Sat. vii. Marcilius says, "Arcadia pecuaria, asini. Arcadia asinorum patria in Græcia, in Italia, Reate." Here is something gained and as asses are now getting into vogue, some of our travelled gentry, perhaps, may be tempted en passant, to pick up one of them to improve the breed at home :Marcilius adds, with unusual briskness, "Comparat eleganter Flaccus hic Persius, cum illis Arcadia civibus hunc Arcadicum ju

venem."

The

VER. 15. Behold him now, &c.] The pompous apparatus with which the youth proceeds to study, the book, the parchment, the paper, &c. is well described; and has a pleasant effect when contrasted with the ridiculous result of the effort. book, it is probable, contained the thesis, or subject of the morning's contemplation; the charta, or coarse paper, was destined to receive his first thoughts, which, when matured and corrected, were to be transferred to the parchment for the benefit of mankind. Persius terms the parchment bicolor, because it was white within and yellow without; but, indeed, the Romans seem to have been a little foppish in this article, and to

Tunc queritur, crassus calamo quod pendeat hu

mor;

Nigra quod infusa vanescat sepia lympha;
Dilutas queritur geminet quod fistula guttas.

O miser, inque dies ultra miser! huccine rerum
Venimus? at cur non potius, teneroque columbo,
Et similis regum pueris, pappare minutum
Poscis, et iratus mammæ lallare recusas?

"An tali studeam calamo ?"-Cui verba quid istas

Succinis ambages? tibi luditur; effluis, amens!

have had it of all hues. Juvenal mentions crocea membrana, Tibullus lutea, a variation of the former colour, and Ovid says

"Nec te purpureo velent vaccinia succo."

The purple seems to have been the fashionable colour; it was certainly the most costly, and when we add to it the golden clasps and rollers, in which the ancients were very profuse, it may be doubted whether their libraries appeared less variegated and rich than our own. The practice seems to have reached rather a late period. St. Jerome is very angry at the use of these purple vellums written with letters of gold and silver. Brandt's ignorant book-hunter has a very spruce library, which yet is far excelled by that of his proto-type in Lucian, who exhibits his Βιβλιον παγκαλον, πορφυραν μεν εχον την διφθέραν, χρυσεν δε τον ομφαλον. κ. τ. 2.

Glimpses of the "Venusinian lamp" break upon the reader in many of the opening passages of this Satire.

VER. 34. Your best of life, &c.] Here the poet gives the illustration before the example; which renders the thought obscure, and increases the difficulty of following him. He had the defective pottery in view from the first; you leak, and will

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