SUMMARY OF SATIRE III PROF. HOUSMAN has well explained the difficulties of this satire. Throughout its first sixty-two verses, it is aimed at those who live amiss though they know the right way; and the satirist takes himself as a specimen of the class (Class. Quart. Jan. 1913, pp. 26-28). Persius alternately acts the part of the youth satirised (which explains the use of the first person in stertimus, findor, querimur) and alternately assumes the rôle of a monitor, expostulating with the young man and trying to recall him to a sense of the follies and wasted opportunities of his life (1-43). Childish sports are suitable to the age of childhood; but when childhood is past, and knowledge has arrived, the serious purposes of life must be faced (44-62). From that point onwards the theme is more general, being directed against those who have not been illuminated by philosophy (63-118). "What? still sleeping? Won't you be up and doing?" "How can I? won't somebody come to help me? My pen won't write, and the ink won't mark" (1-14). Mere baby that you are! you are running to waste; satisfied with your competency, you're letting the precious moments slip, and will soon be no better than Natta who has lost all sense of right and wrong. What torture more horrible than to feel that virtue has for ever passed out of your grasp? (15-43). As a child I too rejoiced in childish games; but you are no child, you have studied philosophy, you know the difference between the straight and the crooked; yet here you are, yawning off yesterday's debauch without a thought for the ends which alone make life worth living! (44-62). The time will come when it will be too late to mend; be wise in time. Learn what you are, and why you were brought here; what is the true end for man, and what are his duties: don't be envious of the rich stores of your wealthy lawyer-neighbour (63-76). At this no doubt some shaggy soldier will burst into a guffaw and tell us that he doesn't care a fig for all the philosophers in creation, with their dull looks, their bent figures, their dismal mutterings and old-wife dreamings that nothing can come out of nothing, and nothing go back to nothing (77-87). A man feels ill and consults his doctor, who orders rest and abstinence. Feeling better after a few days, he returns to his old habits, rejects scornfully the warnings of friends, and bathes on a full stomach. While drinking his wine, he is seized by a sudden stroke, and is carried to the grave by citizens of yesterday's making (88-106). You tell me you have no illness, no fever in your pulse. But does not your heart beat high when you catch sight of money, or when a pretty girl smiles sweetly on you? Can you put up with plain food? Not you! Cold at one moment with fear, at another hot with wrath, you say things and do things which Orestes himself would declare were signs of madness (107-118). SATVRA III "NEMPE haec adsidue? iam clarum mane fenestras intrat et angustas extendit lumine rimas; stertimus, indomitum quod despumare Falernum sufficiat, quinta dum linea tangitur umbra. en quid agis? siccas insana canicula messes 5 10 iam dudum coquit et patula pecus omne sub ulmo est" unus ait comitum. "verumne? itan? ocius adsit huc aliquis. nemon?" turgescit vitrea bilis : findor ut Arcadiae pecuaria rudere credas. iam liber et positis bicolor membrana capillis inque manus chartae nodosaque venit harundo; tunc querimur1 crassus calamo quod pendeat umor, nigra set infusa vanescit2 sepia lympha; dilutas querimur geminet quod fistula guttas. O miser inque dies ultra miser, hucine rerum venimus? aut cur non potius teneroque columbo et similis regum pueris pappare minutum poscis et iratus mammae lallare recusas? 1 querimus a; queritur L: quaeritur P2. 15 SATIRE III "WHAT? Is this to go on for ever? Here is the morning sun pouring in at your windows and widening every chink with its beams. The shadow is just touching the fifth line of the sundial and we are snoring enough to work off that indomitable Falernian! What are you going to do? The mad Dog-star has long been drying and baking the crops; the cattle are all lying under the branching elms! So speaks one of my young lord's friends. 7 "What now, really, is that so? Won't somebody come quick? What? Nobody there?" The glassy bile swells big within him. "I'm just splitting," he shouts; till you would think that all the herds of Arcadia were setting up a bray. We now take up our book, and the two-coloured parchment, well cleansed of hair; some paper too, and the knotty reed-pen. Next we complain that the ink is thick and clots upon the pen; that when water is poured in, the blackness disappears, and that the pen sprinkles the diluted stuff in blots upon the paper. 15 Poor fool, and more of a fool every day! Is this the pass to which we have come? Why not rather go on like a pet dove, or like a child in some great man's house that asks to have its food cut up small, or refuses in a rage to listen to its mammy's lullaby? "An tali studeam calamo?" cui verba? quid istas succinis ambages? tibi luditur. effluis amens, contemnere: sonat vitium percussa maligne respondet viridi non cocta fidelia limo. 20 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 25 30 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 35 40 1 This metaphor, taken from testing the soundness of a jar by the ring, is repeated in v. 24. 2 Referring to the annual parade (transvectio) of the equites, clad in their purple robes of state (trabea), before the Censor. Persius warns the youth that he is in danger of falling into the lowest state of all, that of the incorrigible reprobate who is dead to all moral feeling, and has to suffer, when too |