Reckford, Studies in Persius

Studies in Persius
Author(s): Kenneth J. Reckford

Source: Hermes, 90. Bd., H. 4 (1962), pp. 476-504
Published by: Franz Steiner Verlag
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STUDIES IN PERSIUS*
Around I9IO Marinetti, the chief theorist of futurismo, demanded that the
modern racing car replace Pegasus as a symbol of artistic inspiration. When in
his choliambic preface to the Satires Persius represents Pegasus as a ))nag<( or
)>workhorse, <( the substitution of caballus for equus covers a desire for sincerity
of expression and thought as strong as Marinetti's. Unfortunately, Persius'
flight from triteness has brought on accusations of obscurity'. He has even been
compared to Heraclitus the Dark and to Lycophron the Hellenistic riddler.
Unfortunately too, Probus' vita gives us the impression of a modest and bookish
young man, devoted to )>his sisters and his cousins and his aunts(( and in-
fluenced chiefly by Stoics of the Neronian opposition. Accordingly, Persius
has generally been viewed as a needlessly obscure purveyor of Stoic common
places-))what oft was said and ne'er so ill expressed#<.
We intend in this paper to probe into some aspects of Persius' alleged
obscurity. Tracing first the development of an important but representative
metaphor, of the diseased ears, we shall analyze the unity of the individual
satires, which is mainly metaphorical; only then shall we be ready to discuss
Persius' philosophical and literary attitudes, which are conveyed largely
through metaphor. We shall take into consideration his frequent indirections,
complications of tone, changing voices. Persius makes a bad first impression
on readers; perhaps he had reasons. We shall argue that he is a serious thinker,
highly perceptive and imaginative, highly worth the struggle to understand.
i. Growth of a Metaphor
As Lucretius said, one thing sheds light on another, and our analysis of
the key metaphor of diseased ears touches on a textual problem. Satire i
deals with literary criticism and poetic intention. After describing a recitation
that almost pornographically titillates the degenerate audience, Persius asks
indignantly of the reciter (lines 22-23),
*
The basic text used is A. Persi Flacci Saturarum Liber, ed. W. V. CLAUSEN, Oxford
1956. Commentaries frequently consulted are those of I. CASAUBON, revised by Fr. DUEB-
NER, Leipzig I839, A. J. MACLEANE (with Juvenal), 2. ed., London I867, B. L. GILDERS-
LEEVE, NewYork I875, J. CONINGTON, ed. H. NETTLESHIP, Oxford I893, G. NEIMETHY,
Budapest 1903, F. VILLENEUVE, Paris I9I8, and N. SCIVOLETTO, Florence I956. Read-
ings from the scholia are taken from the edition of 0. JAHN, Leipzig I843.
1 More than one person has shouted, Si non vis intellegi, non debes legi (story in
E. V. MARMORALE, Persio, 2 ed., Florence I956). Persius' obscurity is assumed but not
analyzed by U. KNOCHE, Die Romische Satire, Berlin
I949,
83; many typical complaints
will be found in J. W. DUFF, A Literary History of Rome in the Silver Age, 2. ed., London
I960, 232-33. We should not, however, discount the admiration of Lucan, the praise of
Quintilian and Martial, and the enthusiastic popular reception of the satires after Persius'
death. See the good remarks of MARMORALE,
OP.
Cit., 4I-53, on Persius' anti-rhetorical
feeling, his abhorrence of the superfluous and the obvious, and his 'syntheticizing mind'.
Studies in Persius 477
Tun, vetule, auriculis alienis colligis escas,
auriculis, quibus et dicas cute perditus 'ohe' ?
In I873 MADVIG threw out the second auriculis despite its overwhelming manu-
script support 1. He asked why editors should have taken 'ohe' as the protest of
a man overwhelmed by an audience's praise; he felt uncomfortable about et
if it joined quibus and cute; finally, he could make no sense of the passage
if quibus were to be taken as a dative, with auriculis:
Sed quibus pronomen necessario ad auriculis geminatum refertur; qui
si dativus est, cur alienis auriculis (quae sane non laudabant nec clama-
bant) #ohe ( poeta dicat, non magis video, quam quid ad eam rem perti-
neat cutis mentio; . . .
Relying, apparently, on his faulty recollection of the testimony of Priscian,
MADVIG proposed the emendation articulis2. Although he never explained why
food should, in some literal fashion, be collected for ears, his proposal, to
refer quibus to escas (articulis being now an ablative), was resuscitated in
HoUSMAN'S powerful I9I3 article (Athe correction has no flaw () and adopted
without misgivings by NEMETHY and CLAUSEN3. Other editors retained auri-
culis. It is our contention that articulis has neither textual nor grammatical
foundation (for et can easily be read as equivalent to etiam) 4, that MADVIG and
HOUSMAN simply failed to grasp the allusive and complex metaphor that
Persius was using. After tracing its development in Persius' satires, we shall
return to the passage in question.
1
J. MADVIG, Adversaria Critica II, Ad Scriptores Latinos, Kopenhagen I873, I28.
2
Priscian cites line 22, not line 23, in Lib. 3, 6 (Prisciani Caesariensis Grammatici
Opera, rec. A. KREHL, Leipzig I8I9, 130), or 3, 34 (Prisciani Institutionum I, rec. M. HERTZ,
in H. KEIL, Grammatici Latini II I, Leipzig I855, I07). According to JAHN, PUTSCH
(whose edition was unavailable to me) read articulis in line 22, which KREHL changed
without comment to auriculis.
3
A. E. HOUSMAN, Notes on Persius, CQ. 7, 1913, 14, translates without explanining:
))What! Catering at your age for others' ears with cates which you, disabled by gout and
dropsy, must yourself forgo? # His dissatisfaction with et apparently induced him to accept
MADVIG's emendation (but see p. note 479, below). NAMETHY more explicitly follows
MADVIG's explanation of escas as pleasures; we shall argue (cf. page 479, below) that escas
must refer to the poetry recited.
4
(a) For et as equivalent to etiam (Greek 1rL), see A. FORCELLINI, Lexicon Totius
Latinitatis II, Padua 1940, 305-o6: Item et praecedentia complet perficitque, et signi-
ficat et sic quoque, et pariter, et eodem tempore, et praeterea, et insuper ... (b) In poetry,
of course, et may introduce a new idea but be postpositive (cf. Hor., Carm. I, 4, II).
(c) With a repeated word, generally, its force may be rhetorical (Cf. Cic., Verr. act. II 5, I2 I:
errabas, Verres, et vehementer errabas). In Persius, Sat. I, 23, et is felt to go rhetorically
with the repeated auriculis, but grammatically, as 'moreover', it introduces the whole
concept, quibus dicas cute perditus 'ohe'. Compare Sat. 6, 31-32, nunc et de caespite vivo
frange aliquid, where nunc et means 'now even', not 'and now'.
478 KENNETH J. RECKFORD
Cleansing of ears is a minor metaphor in Satire
5:
(A) Cultor enim iuvenumpurgatas inseris aures/frugeCleanthea .. (5,83-4)
(B) Stoicus hic aurem mordaci lotus aceto (5, i86)
For the comparison of philosophical teaching to ear-cleansing, Persius is, as
so often, indebted to Horace. Perhaps the analogy was a commonplace'. In
Epistles I, 2, a protreptic letter full of popular philosophical loci, Horace uses
it negatively, to indicate the failure of possessions to cheer a worried man:
(a) Qui cupit aut metuit, iuvat illum sic domus et res / ut
lipium
pictae
tabulae, fomenta Podagrum, / auriculas citharae collecta sorde dolentis.
(5I-3)
Note the emphatic,coarse word, auriculas. More positively, Horace compares
the healing effect of philosophy to cleansing of the ears (Epist. I, I, 7),
(b) Est mihi purgatam crebo qui personet aurem.
and to a farming operation (Epist. I, I, 40),
(c) si modo culturae patientem commodet aurem.
Evidently, Persius has conflated passages (b) and (c). The context is the same,
an exhortation to philosophic study. Persius has concentrated on the metaphor
of farming, which appears elsewhere in Satire 5, glanced at medicine in the
ambiguous purgatas, and elaborated the hint of culturae in (c) into a typically
suggestive, uncomfortable, Hieronymus Bosch-like image of ))sowing the ears <
(compare sparsisse oculos, or in iecore aegro nascuntur domini).
In Satires 4 and 2 Persius uses another metaphor, of thirsty or hungry
ears, to convey his attitude toward men too easily flattered. The fool trusts
in popular opinion rather than self-knowledge (4,
50),
(C) nequiquam populo bibulas donaveris aures ....
or else he impiously treats the gods as if, like humans, they had ears to be
flattered (2, 29-30),
(D) aut quidnam est qua tu mercede deorum
emeris auriculas? Pulmone et lactibus unctis?
Horace had represented man's susceptibility to flattery in similar metaphors,
gaudent praenomine molles auriculae (Sat. 2, 5, 32-3), vacuas permulceat auris
(Epist. i, i6, 26). Since, however, softness of the ears indicates susceptibility
in a letter of Cicero, some such metaphor may have been colloquial, even
1
Th. L. L., II, Leipzig I900-o6, I505, cites from Seneca, Pliny and the medical
writers examples of earache and deafness and the 'instillation' of sucus to clean out sordes.
Plin., Nat. 20, 4, uses purgare of this process. The Stoics, who delighted in physical and
mental parallels, may have accounted flattery a disease; cf. S. V. F., I 383, where
naterjata
is compared to a'ptvOtov to'
6CQitV,
and 385, Ao'yov
ma0at'gov-rog.
For good sense
as healing, cf. Hor., Epist. i, 8, i6, praeceptum auriculis hoc instillare memento, and
perhaps Lucil., fr. 298 and 690 (MARX), the latter of which perhaps contributed to Horace's
farming metaphor.
proverbial'. Undoubtedly, Horace's example encouraged Persius' predilection
for the diminutive, auricula, which is more vulgar than auris and so more
suggestive of a special weakness2.
Flattered, diseased and healed, the ))ears ( form a unifying metaphor in
Satire i, which deals with poetry, its practice, standards and criticism. The
ears appear five times:
(E) Tun, vetule, auriculis alienis colligis escas,
auriculis, quibus et dicas cute perditus 'ohe' ? (22-23)
(F) nec manus auriculas imitari mobilis albas. (59)
(G) Sed quid opus teneras mordaci radere vero auriculas? (I07-8):
(H) Auriculas asini quis non habet? (I2I)
(I) inde vaborata lector
mihiferveat
aure ... (I26)
Significantly, only the healthy ear in (I) is called auris, the others auriculae.
Passages (E) and (F) are concerned with flattery and false criticism. In (E),
a man flatters his audience by reciting poetry designed primarily to soothe
the ears through its mellifluous sound, its flow untroubled by elision, sono-
rity, or any other sign of Roman vigor3. As in (C) and especially (D), of which
he may be thinking, Persius employs imagery of perverted function (the ear
eating tid-bits) to suggest a perverted standard of criticism or taste. The
dubious meal is the poetry recited, a reflection, too, on the critical failings of
the audience4. As Persius sees it, both parties suffer from the symbiotic rela-
tionship of flatterers and flattered, false criticism and false creative standards.
The statement is complex, like the idea. Line 23 alludes directly to the passage
in Horace where Teiresias advises Odysseus, the legacy-hunter, to flatter his
victim unmercifully (Sat. 2, 5, 96-8):
Importunus amat laudari: donec ohe! iam
ad caelum manibus sublatis dixerit, urge,
crescentem tumidis
infla
sermonibus utrem.
1
A. OTTO, Die Sprichw6rter und sprichw6rtlichen Redensarten der R6mer, Leipzig
I890, 46-47, cites Cic., Ad Q. Fr. 2, I5 (equals 2, I4 [13], 4): me et esse et fore oricula
infima scito molliorem; also Mart. 5,
67,
2, Amm. I9, I2, 5. Ears can be 'filled', so are
commonly hungry, thirsty, or satiated (more examples in T. L. L., II
I5II-I5).
We say
'led by the nose', but the Greeks and Romans said, 'led by the ears', (Plut., De vitioso
pudore 536a;
cf. also Plin., Ep. 3, I3, 4.).
2 See in general the comments of B. AXELSON, Unpoetische Worter, Lund 1945, 39-43,
on the frequency of diminutives in Lucretius, Catullus' personal style, and Roman satire.
AXELSON also notes (p. 45) that asellus is the usual word in poetry, asinus uncommon and
forceful.
8 See the excellent discussion by F. VILLENEUVE, Essai sur Perse, Paris I9I8, 208- i8,
and MARMORALE, Op.
cit. (above, p. 476 note I), I96-205, of the stylistic excesses of contem-
porary neo-Alexandrianism and the faults specifically parodied by Persius in Satire I.
4
That escae were of poetry was well argued by CASAUBON, who cited numerous exam-
ples of the colloquialism, to 'feast one's ears,' in Greek and Latin.
A typical victim of flattery is 'blown up' until he can take no more and says
'Ohe!' (short for 'Ohe, iam satis est!') 1. As often, Persius has deliberately re-
versed the borrowed metaphor, making not the victim but the flatterer say
'ohe'. Cute perditus, often used of dropsy, suggests both physical swollenness
and the strain of endlessly producing the poetic tid-bits demanded by the
audience2. Although the reciter deceives his audience by flattering their ears
with superficial attractiveness of manner and style, the Horatian allusionl
suggests that he is deceived as well as deceiver, victim of the very flattery
manipulated to entrap others.
The next passage (F) explicitly portrays a man taken in by flattery. A
patron, he has a captive audience of clients too dependent on him for their
victuals to tell him the truth about his poetry3. Only the satirist dares call
him fool and fathead. The clients, lacking the satirist's freedom, can only
express themselves indirectly, in sign language and behind the patron's
back: the stork's bill eknocks' him, the bitch's tongue sticks out, and most
important, the 'white ears', presumably of asses, symbolize the suscepti-
bility of fools to flattery and their consequent deafness to the true criticism
which they need.
In (G) the two metaphorical uses of ears are interwoven. Flattery and false
criticism are now the diseases that require healing. Auriculas has already
stood for susceptibility to flattery; teneras suggests more specific weaknesses.
1
Depending on the punctuation, the man in Hor., Sat. 2, 5, 96 may say 'ohe' or 'ohe
iam;' for the idiom, cf. I, 5, I2-I3. As LEJAY points out, tumidis describes 'the conversa-
tion of the flatterer and consequently the thoughts of the vain man'.
2 The point of cute perditus is not entirely clear. It may, as CASAUBON thinks, be a
physical sickness that implies, as so often in Persius, a mental failing. Or Persius may have
in mind Horace's tumidis (above, p. 477 note 4), dropsy being a more suitable image of a
brainswollen attitude than gout.
3
For the connection between bad criticism and false friendship, Persius draws heavily
upon Hor., Ep. 2, 3, 419-28:
Ut praeco, ad merces turbam qui cogit emendas,
adsentatores iubet ad lucrum ire poeta
dives agris, dives positis in faenore nummis.
Si vero est unctum qui recte ponere possit
et spondere levi pro paupere et eripere atris
litibus implicitum, mirabor si sciet inter-
noscere mendacem verumque beatus amicum.
Tu seu donaris seu quid donare voles cui,
nolito ad versus tibi factos ducere plenum
laetitiae: clamabit enim 'pulchre ! bene ! recte !'
Contrast the true friendship and criticism of Quintilius (lines 438-52). As G. C. FISKE,
Lucilius and Horace, Madison 1920, I96-9, points out, the doctrine of friendship )>bounds
and defines... the doctrine of the satirist's right and duty to employ frankness of utter-
canee. See also, for the relationship between the aims of satire and the doctrine of friend-
ship, FIsKE, Lucilius and Horace, TAPA 40,1909, 125-6, I28-3i, and FISKE, Lucilius,
the Ars Poetica of Horace and Persius, HSCP 24, I9I3.
Studies in Persius 48I
(i) An ear is >>tender ( when hurt by rough or vigorous poetry, when it can only
endure the # smooth-flowing ?line (tener, levis, mollis) 1.
(2)
An ear is ))tender <4
when offended by the biting truth. (3) Tender ears more than likely belong
to a tender person-one thinks of Pope's >>soft Dean a-in a tender, i. e. effemi-
nate society. An, Romule, ceves? Effeminate poetry and weak criticism (belle)
are symptoms of a general emasculation. Mordaci suggests honest criticism,
perhaps cynic frankness; to #bite one's ears off < (aurem mordicus abstulere)
may have been a proverbial expression for sharp criticism. Radere reminds us
of Persius' satirical purpose as professed in Satires 5, I5, pallentis radere
mores, where the satirist-surgeon scours diseased flesh in order to probe into
a wound. In an earlier satire, a man's physical delicacy indicated to Persius
his need of philosophical healing (3, II3-4),
... tenero latet ulcus in ore
putre quod haut deceat plebeia radere beta.
In Satire i, therefore, Persius has conflated two earlier ideas, of satirical cleans-
ing and the delicacy symptomatic of disease, which is transferred from the
palate to the ears. Note that the healing agent is the satirist now, not the
philosopher. The reciter had better accept the truth (vero), or else!
Passage (H) is the climax of Satire i. Persius' earlier Nam Romae quis non,
which misled us into expecting some vitriolic predicate noun, is at last com-
pleted: >>Who hasn't those ears? # Asini completes the picture. The clients
were right, as it turns out, to gesture mockingly behind their patron's back.
The allusion to Midas naturally suggests Nero, who spent so much time and
effort deluding himself about his literary abilities 2. We should not, however,
think solely of Nero: Persius' point, after all, is that everyone has asses' ears.
The disease is all too contagious. In Ovid's version of the story, which Persius
apparently uses, Apollo gave Midas asses' ears because of his failure at poetic
I
According to C. HENDERSON, jr., A Lexicon of the Stylistic Terms used in Roman
Literary Criticism, Diss. Univ. of N. C. Chapel Hill., I955, terner in its pejorative sense
describes ))an affected delicacy in style, a fault to which the Middle Style is particularly
subject *; cf. the remarks of Quint., Inst. 5, 12, I8, Tac., Dial. 26. Synonyms are dissolutus,
effeminatus, fluens; contrast fortis, robustus, virilis. In his appendix, HENDERSON notes the
large number of critical terms derived from the care and condition of the human body
(including, one notes, nervus and mentula). Persius also has in mind the effeminate manner
of reciting; cf. Quint., Inst. I, 8, 2: sit autem in primis lectio vivilis . . . non in canticum
dissoluta, nec plasmate, ut in plerisque fit, effeminata.
2 For Nero, see the excellent discussion of VILLENEUVE, Op. cit. (above, p. 479 note 3),
22 1-241, who criticizes the contradictory and unlikely allusions suggested by the scholia
(e.g. for Sat. I,
4,
29, 120, 12I, I28) and developed sometimes by modern commentators.
Persius is attacking the whole school, argues VILLENEUVE; the prince simply 'wrote a la
mode' (p. 224). MARMORALE, Op. cit. (p. 476 note I), I9I-5, shows that the fragments
that we possess of Nero's writings come close to the style satirized by Persius;without
surer evidence, however, one may question MARMORALE'S belief (pp. 2IO-4) that the
verses cited are by Nero.
Hermes 90,4
31
criticism: alone, the foolish king preferred the (rustic?) poetry of Pan to the
(hypercivilized?) poetry of Apollo '. Persius, being himself a semipaganus
who likes a certain roughness in poetry, gives all of Rome asses' ears for the
bad criticism that delights in delicacy and mellifluousness of verse. The satirist
therefore replaces the barber in the story who could not keep his secret to him-
self.
Truth heals the diseased ears of society. Here is one of Persius' justifica-
tions for writing satire, the other being his own compulsion to speak out. In
passage (I), the reader of Old Comedy is represented as having an already
cleansed ear, auris now, not auricula, with which he will listen to Persius.
Ferveat may punningly recall foveat, the appreciation due to Persius, but it is
primarily the reader who benefits by the application of satire. His ear is steamed
clear; decoctius (line I25) suggests an infusion of alcoholic syrup. For the
stinging liquid, compare passage (B), where a Stoic's ear, perhaps Persius'
own, is #washed with biting vinegar<(. But whereas in Satire 5 the man with
clean ears was the philosopher or his student, in Satire i it is the satirist and
literary critic or his reader. Salvation comes from a new quarter.
It is one thing to have studied the metaphor of diseased ears in context,
to have seen it grow in symbolic force from a single Horatian allusion to a key
metaphor. It is quite another to investigate the inner logic of the metaphor2.
What does Persius mean when he asks, ))Who has not asses'ears? <
A recent
playwright showed the human race turning by a kind of contagious competi-
tiveness into rhinoceri. Although Ionesco obviously intended his farce as an
attack on social and intellectual conformity, it remains unclear whether he
thought
of )>rhinoceritis ( as
inevitably defying
education or not. So it is with
the asses' ears. The plague has spread significantly: everyone has Midas'
sickness except the satirist-surgeon. Man's effort to rise above the beast in
himself was a Stoic commonplace3; although in Persius' time the pull towards
bestiality may have appeared stronger than in Horace's, the disease has yet
1
See Ovid, Met. II, 92-I93. Midas has pingue ingenium, is delighted barbarico car-
mine. Persius borrows from Ovid the whiteness of the ears (line 176, villisque albentibus
implet) and the digging of the hole (I86 effodit, I89 scrobibus).
2
See the interesting discussion of the internal logic of animal comparisons in Horace
and Juvenal by W. S. ANDERSON, )>Imagery in the Satires of Horace and Juvenal ((, AJP.
8I, ig6o, 239-4I, (Horace continually appeals to reason, implies that man should never
be comparable to a beast), and 257-8: ))Whereas Horace can ironically compare himself
to a mouse or a donkey and thereby suggest the rational and ethical goods of mankind,
Juvenal says that Domitian is unqualifiedly a savage beast and the Egyptians worse than
beasts ... The capacity of Man to conquer his lower nature by reason, to achieve that
higher 'freedom', no longer exists in Juvenal's world ((.
That the fool was bestial
(7to$tC&qlg)
was a minor Stoic tenet: cf. S. V. F. III 677,
762 (Lact., Instit. 5, II): Etiam si nemo est quin emori malit quam converti in aliquam
figuram bestiae, quamvis hominis mentem sit habiturus, quanto est miserius, in hominis figura
animo esse efferato?
only reached the ears, and a serious intention to be cured, Persius seems to
believe, should still suffice.
2. The Metaphorical Unity of the Satires
Satire i, in which the diseased ears are a key metaphor, is unique in having
dramatic as well as metaphorical unity. The greater part of the poem takes
shape from an explosion of laughter, an explosion that begins early but is
restrained by the fear of what people will think (8-II), breaks out in tentative
but incomplete exclamations (26-27, 56-57, 87), and after repeated frustra-
tion, comparable to that of children prevented from urinating in public places
(II3-4),
or of Midas' barber from telling his ticklish secret, explodes in a
long-compressed, powerful guffaw of revelation (I20-I). The running con-
trast between repression and fulfillment gives Satire i an extraordinary dra-
matic impact. There is no comparable dramatic unity in the other satires,
only adroitness of structure, skillful patterning'. In every one of the six
satires, on the other hand, unity devolves perceptibly from the relation of
metaphors, which are anticipated, repeated, reversed, entwined, and other-
wise developed. To trace these unities is to begin to comprehend Persius'
thought.
By contrast, the study of Persius' themes by themselves inevitably proves
sterile. Loci communes may be dug up like carrots: what a wonderful mind
Persius must have had, to tell us that self-knowledge is good and flattery
bad2! To find Stoic parallels, especially in Seneca, requires no great scholar-
ship. Despite MARMORALE'S good warnings, one tends to forget that Persius
characteristically thinks in concrete images, not abstract terms: thus, the
undesirability of flattery may be a commonplace, but the asses' ears are not.
To regard his metaphors merely as poetic embellishment leads to an unreward-
ing peeling away of onionskins: those who find nothing within need blame
only themselves.
1
Satire 5 has the reverse-patterning familiar from Horace (e. g. Sat. 2, 6): from arbitra-
ry writing and the superficial life (i-i8), Persius is set apart (I9-25); to the social and
philosophical standards of Persius and Cornutus (30-5I) is opposed the diversity of
mankind
(52ff.);
to philosophical healing (62-65), sickness and delay (54-6i, 66-72),
etc. In Satire 3, the tutor arousing the youth from sleep in Part I parallels the preacher
rousing his auditor from spiritual lethargy in Part II; my friend and student, Miss Cynthia
KENT, finds the more intricate pattern, ABBA-ABBA. If Satires 5, 3, i form a chrono-
logical sequence, one could argue that the structure of Persius' satires became less Horatian
and more complex as time went on.
2 VILLENEUVE, op. cit. (above,p. 479 note 3), 203-4, argues that Sat. I, 67ff., attacks
the )>eternal commonplaces e of rhetoric. Persius' contemporary, Seneca, uses these flosculi
regularly, but they are not specifically Stoic; cf. also VON ARNIM, S. V. F., I, XVIII:
Seneca vero et iis auctoribus se addixit qui inde a Panaetio Stoicam austeritatem miti-
orem reddere et orationis ornamentis condire conabantur, et non tam illorum doctrinam
enarrare quam ipse illorum copiis adiutus philosophari voluit.
31*
We shall examine as a test case the shortest and least appreciated of the
satires. Satire 4 is probably early. On the one hand, it has been called )#scholar-
ly
(((by
which is appaiently meant )>unimaginative((; compare ?bookish ( and
>banal <); but at the same time, Persius' imagery of sexual perversion has made
strong commentators tremble. The satire, then, is inevitably summed up as
a presentation, at once unoriginal and needlessly obscure, of the following
commonplaces (VILLENEUVE'S paraphrase is fairly
typical):
>Alcibiade voulait se faire admirer du peuple avant meme d'avoir appris
'a distinguer le bien du mal. I1 tombait dans le defaut commun qui est de
ne pas se connaitre: nous ne sommes clairvoyants que lorsqu'il s'agit de
defauts d'autrui. Ainsi nous allons, prenant le voisin pour cible et cible 'a
notre tour, et nous berant des louanges que nous donnent les naifs. Mais
nous ferions mieux de nous etudier nous-memes 1. #
Let us )>shake out R Persius' obscurity and see if we can discover something
beyond this superficial, linear train of ideas.
Passing over niceties of tone, contrasts between high and vulgar diction,
and dramatic changes of rhythm, we soon notice Persius' Horatian tendency
to use concrete images instead of abstract ideas. There are the >>plus < words,
the beard for masculinity and wisdom, the balance, straight line and rule
for Stoic and commonsensical values; on the #minus(( side, 'sucking the
wrinkled dregs of dying vinegar' describes one way of life, unctus and in cute
solem another. Rather more is meant than just Avarice and Luxury.
When a symbol has been used before, Persius invariably deepens its mean-
ing. The >pack on our neighbor's back(( was a commonplace, depicting our
tolerance or ignorance of our own shortcomings in contrast to our criticism
of those of others (the mote and the beam) 2. Taking for granted our knowledge
of the metaphor, Persius adds something new (lines 23-24). To man's folly he
holds up the injunction, not to *know thyself < but to ))descend into thyself <,
suggesting, as elsewhere, the unplumbed depths of viciousness. The mantica
image therefore reinforces the pervasive metaphorical contrast in Satire 4
between appearance and reality, surface and substance.
Besides deepening commonplaces, Persius rings changes on Horace3. For
the present, two examples will suffice. Line 34 is derived from Hor., Sat. 2, 5,
1 VILLENEUVE,
Op.
cit. (above, p. 479 note 3), 330; cf. also p. 332: *cette quatri6me
satire, souvent obscure dans le ddtail et d'une forme p6nible, est compos6e, en somme,
avec une rdgularit6 tr6s scolaire &(. On page 440 VILLENEUVE calls Satire 4 virtually a
stylistic exercise.
2 Phaedrus 4, Catullus 22, 31, and Horace, Sat. 2, 3, 299, describe every man as carry-
ing two packs, one behind, with his own faults, one in front, with those of others. Persius
more economically has every man carry one pack (behind).
3
Usually listed or catalogued without real analysis, Persius' borrowings from Horace
have been studied carefully by D. HENSS, Studien zur Imitationstechnik des Persius,
42-43, aliquis cubito stantem prope tangens inquiet. The allusion is more than
verbal. We are meant to contrast the Horatian context, where A digs B in
the ribs to praise C, to that of Persius, where A disparages C to B. The praise
in Horace's satire reflected the uncritical weakness of a society prone to flattery;
Persius reveals the reverse of flattery,malicious gossiping behind one's back.Com-
pare the stork's bill, asses' ears and bitch's tongue in Satire i. Similarly,
line 42 should recall the gladiatorial metaphor of Hor., Epist. 2, 2, 97-98,
caedimur et totidem plagis consumimus hostem
lento Samnites ad lumina prima duello.
Horace was describing the labored repartee of a mutual-admiration society
of poets, one reason for his pretended decision to stop writing poetry. But
Persius again describes not the meaningless praise but the meaningful nastiness
of gossip, which hints at actual weaknesses (the exposed legs here standing,
as we shall see, for an exposable sexual deviation). Comparison of the two
Horatian allusions shows no obscurity for its own sake but rather a surprising
consistency of purpose in Persius' adaptation of metaphor.
Persius is less easily understood when the proverb or anecdote to which
he alludes is unfamiliar, or when he mixes his metaphors, as in lines I4-I6.
The Anticyras, for example, are easy, since Horace had used Anticyra by meto-
nomy for the hellebore there produced, a cure for the insanity of the non-
philosopher (Sat. 2,3,83), contrasted ironically in Persius' satire to the non-
philosophers' cure for Socratic wisdom, sorbitio cicutae. We are familiar, too,
with the idea behind summa nequiquam pelle decorus. Persius is following the
Platonic contrast between the externals of life (beauty, birth, fame) and the
unseen realm of true value. At the same time, the )>outermost skin < suggests
to Persius a fable, probably of the ass in the lion's skin, leading him to the
animal-metaphor, blando caudam iactare popellol. One is tempted at first to
think with the scholiast of a dog fawning on its master, as Alcibiades must
fawn on the popellus for his political advancement, but on closer view we find
an evil symbiosis like that in Satire i. The mob is blandus, it flatters Alcibiades,
and so we may think with CASASAUBON and most commentators of a peacock
Diss. Marburg, I95I, (unpubl.), unfortunately unavailable to me. HENSS'S excellent critical
method and some interesting results appear in >>Die Imitationstechnik des Persius <4,
Philologus 98, I954, 277-94.
1 For the animal metaphor, compare Sat. 5, I15- I7;
Sin tu, cum fueris nostrae paulo ante farinae, / pelliculam veterem retines et fronte
politus / astutam vapido servas in pectore volpem,
where Persius is thinking of (a) an animal that never changes its skin, as a fool never loses
his folly; (b) external pretensions and appearance vs. real quality (suggested by the fox
in the lion's skin? cf. Hor., Sat. 2, 3, I86); (c) a fox, as of the Spartan boy, gnawing within.
The metaphor is highly suggestive, also, as CONINGTON and NEMETHY point out, highly
inconsistent. In order to see no contradiction, VILLENEUVE and SCIVOLETTo are compelled
to take pelliculam solely as the real self, not the outward appearance.
displaying its tail in response to popular demand. The exemplum is tradi-
tional: that beauty is valueless to man, because even a fowl shares it, is the
sort of Stoic commonplace that Persius disdains to spell out in detail'. If
iactare troubles us, it is because Persius is saving the give-away pandere for
a more climactic moment (line 36) 2.
Closer bonds than the theme of self-knowledge hold the poem together.
Consider the picture of 35-4I. To Socrates, the )>bearded teacher(( of line i,
are contrasted the hypocrites, better known from Juvenal's second satire,
qui Curios simulant et Bacchanalia vivunt,
whose sexual deviations belie the virile promise of their beards3. The shaven
nether parts clearly imply homosexual tendencies. Images of nature perverted
reinforce the idea: runcantem (properly, the clearing of fields) and mansuescit
aratro imply the natural purpose of sex, the fruitful farming-operation, to
which the perversion of homosexuality (the aratrum in the fruitless fields) is
contrasted. Populo marcentis pandere vulvas takes up and completes the animal-
image of line I5. Alcibiades, the peacock, is now compared to a male prostitute4;
the )>tailwagging ( of his homosexuality becomes a powerful metaphor of the
prostitution of office-seeking, where one must suit the populus. Seemingly a
chance example of human folly or viciousness, lines 33-4I in Part II of the
satire confirm Socrates' refutation of Alcibiades' proud claims in Part I. The
young nobleman who knows philosophy but fails to live by it (Ioff.) is like
the hypocrite who has the beard without the morality. Alcibiades' hedonistic
philosophy of life, intimated in lines I7-I8, is shown in all its potential
degradation in the picture of the effeminate sunbather in 33-4I. And the
simile of the beggar-woman selling herbs in 2I-22 is brought into focus by
the image of the prostitute-politician selling himself.
The sexual metaphor is expanded further in Part III, lines 43-46. The
wound concealed by the golden belt is of sexual impotence. The male prostitute
1
Cf. Seneca, Ep. 76, 9: Formonsus est: et pavones. Perhaps influenced by Persius,
Seneca, Ep. 8o, IO, makes a hidden physical blemish or wound (probably sexual) symbolic
of a spiritual fault: si vis illum aestimare totumque scire, qualis sit, fasciam solve: multum
mali sub illa latet.
2 HENSS,
Op.
cit. (above p. 484, note 3), 28I, suggests that Persius was borrowing from
Horace, Sat. 2, 2, 26, rara avis et picta pandat spectacula cauda. With iactare Persius intro-
duces the idea of boastfulness suitable to Alcibiades; he defers pandere until line 36,
where pandere vulvas clearly describes homosexuality (A. E. HOUSMAN, Praefanda, Hermes
66, 1931, 406, compares Catullus
I5, i8, patente porta).
3
According to Musonius, frs. I8-2I, cited by POHLENZ, Die Stoa, G6ttingen I951,
302, the beard was a sign of man's nature, as the mane of the lion's. Like Horace before
him, Persius makes the beard an emblem of the Stoic philosopher (cf. Sat. I, 133).
4
See the excellent discussion of lines 35-4i by NAMETHY, who makes it clear that
populo... pandere vulvas signifies publice prostare. For evidence that depilation of the
nether regions here implies homosexuality, NAMETHY cites Juv., 2, II-I3, Mart., 2, 62,
I-2; 9, 27, I-2.
can only be a )>wife #; there is no true masculinity in him. So too, Persius
suggests, a surface appearance of philosophy is meaningless, not only because
there will be tell-tale signs of one's real condition, but because one is endan-
gered by a wound that outward pretense cannot cure. As an attempt at inter-
course would betray the man's impotence, so the tests applied by the philo-
sopher reveal the disease of the unphilosophical man, avarice, luxury, or
ambition, which if not cured renders him utterly negligible.
Satire 4, then, is held together chiefly by the metaphorical contrast be-
tween shadow and substance. The contrast is of course Platonic: we find it in
the Symposium, where Agathon's rhetorical brilliance and Alcibiades' physical
beauty are dimmed by the golden inner excelience of the Silenus-like Socrates,
whose victories are true and lasting. Persius takes his starting-point from the
pseudo-Platonic Alcibiades I, where Socrates stops the would-be politician
before his debut and leads him maieutically to realize his lack of self-knowledge
and his corresponding inability to achieve real success'. But Persius deepens
the familiar contrast with forcible new metaphors of the peacock, the beggar-
woman, the homosexual and the wounded man, all analogues of Alcibiades.
Abandoning the mime of Socrates-Alcibiades, Persius generalizes (ut nemo) to
bring the lesson home to his audience, but the lesson is that we are all Alci-
biades, just as we all have asses' ears.
Evidently, the integral unity of Satire 4 comes more from metaphor than
from theme. One may paraphrase by scenes, I, II, III; but the very repetition
of words, often vulgar ones-sorbitio, sorbere, sorbet, plebecula, popello, populo,
pelle, cuticula, cute, pannucia, pannosam, despuat,
respue-reminds the reader
to look for inner connections between these scenes. The three parts contribute
interdependently to the central metaphor of the handsome exterior concealing
inner weakness and perversion.
The other satires have a similar unity. 2 and 3 closely resemble 4 in theme
and treatment; 5, possibly the earliest, is longer and looser; i, most likely the
latest, shows the most carefully contrived metaphorical structure. 6 is sui
generis. We shall discuss these satires in less detail than 4, merely summari-
zing the results of our analysis.
Satire 5 is the most straightforward of the satires. Its theme is the contrast
between philosopher and non-philosopher; its chief metaphor, again, is of
shadow and substance. To the inanities of )>grand style< epics and tragedies
Persius opposes the substantial and sincere wisdom of the Horatian mode; to
the meanderings of non-philosophers, the single standard of the philosophic
1
Taking the question of Socrates in Alcibiades I io6c, ))When what subject is being
discussed, Alcibiades, will you stand up to advise the Athenians? <, Persius makes it dra-
matic: Alcibiades stands up, signals for silence, then wonders what to say! Persius other-
wise borrows no more from Alc. I than his opening situation; cf. Horace's use of Alcaeus
in Carm. I, 37. The influence of Alcibiades II on Persius' second satire is very dubious.
life; to legal liberty, the true inner freedom that only philosophy affords.
Through Persius' metaphorical connections the tired Stoic paradox comes to
life. Thus Cornutus' teachings are the work of a farmer (63-64),
cultor enim iuvenum purgatas inseris aures
fruge Cleanthea.
By contrast, the legalists are steriles veri (75). Cornutus 'grows pale' over his
studies (62), others buy 'pale' cumin (55) to introduce an artificial worth-
less pallor. Cornutus understood the Horatian art, decerpere noctes (42); Luxuria
warns, with pseudo-Epicurean vulgarity, carpamus dulcia (I51). Unphiloso-
phical days are murky, crassos (6o); thick, too, the laugh of the Philistine,
Pulfenius (I90). Cornutus is described as (24-25)
dinoscere cautus
quid solidum crepet et pictae tectoria linguae.
The philosopher is asked (Io5 -6),
et veris speciem dinoscere calles,
ne qua sub aerato mendosum tinniat auro?
The point is important: the failure of the legalists to appreciate the paradox,
all fools are slaves, is part and parcel of their general incompetence to tell
apart sound from meaning, false coin from true'.
Again, in Satire 2, the metaphor of shadow and substance is the tlheme.
Prayers are whispered, not revealed, the truth is introrsum, sub lingua;
'sanctity' of outward observance goes hand in glove with inner viciousness;
men for whom the real Jove is infinitely remote and unimportant bribe temple-
keepers to get the ear of his statues; superstition runs against sense, prayer
against practice, and man's entire folly in religious matters is summarized in
the crowning metaphor of the gilded images of the gods:
in sancto quid facit aurum?2
To the 'religion' of hypocrisy, mouthing, buying and selling and gilding, is
contrasted the truly religious state of mind,
compositum ius fasque animo sanctosque recessus
mentis et incoctum generoso pectus honesto.
Persius' imagery goes beyond proving the Stoic paradox, all fools are impious,
' The metaphorical unity of Satire 5 is founded largely on suggestive word-repetitions:
turgescat, turgescere (20, 56), dinoscere (24, 105), centum, centenas, centum (2, 26, I9I),
decerpere, carpamus (42, I5I), laxamus, laxes
(44,
IOI), pallentis, impallescere
(55,
62),
crassos, crassum (60, I90), vappa, vapido, vapida
(77,
II7, 148), nugator, nugaris (127, I69),
recenti ... piper, recens piper (54-55, 136), intumuit, tumet
(I45,
I83), adrodens, rodere
(I63, I70).
2 The most important word-repetitions in Satire 2 are emaci, emeris (3, 30) and sancte,
sanctos (I5,
73);
note also aurem, auriculas (2I, 30), Crassi, crassa (36, 42), fibris, fibra
(26, 45), coxit, incoctum
(65, 74), argentum and aurum throughout.
to suggest, through his emphasis on the physical aspects of contemporary
religion, the pressing need for genuine spirituality.
Satire 3 is ostensibly divided into two parts, the first a dialogue in which
a tutor attempts to excite a lazy student to renew his study, presumably of
philosophy, the second a diatribe on the theme that philosophy should no
more be postponed than the healing of disease. There is a thematic connection,
which, as usual, may be paralleled in Seneca: )>Wake up to be healed of folly'((.
But Persius probes deeper. In his satire, the macabre death of the invalid
who rejected a friend's advice becomes an image of the spiritual death of the
nonphilosopher. The preacher ends by testing his listener for symptoms of
spiritual sickness. What ultimately holds the satire together is the pervasive
disease metaphor, common in Part I as well as Part II: the student's glassy
bile is 'swollen' (8), he 'splits' with anger (9), flows away (20), bursts his lung
(27), is known 'beneath the skin' by his adviser (30). The image of his inertia
(58-59),
stertis adhuc laxumque caput conpage soluta
oscitat hesternum dissutis undique malis ....
points forward to the 'relaxed' lips of the dying man of the parable in Part II.
The relationships, tutor-student in I and doctor-patient in II, are integrally
connected 2.
In Satires 2, 3, 4, and 5, we regularly find the paradoxical imagery of
shadow and substance, appearance and reality, reinforced by subsidiary
metaphors of disease, bestiality, or perversion. In Satire i the metaphors are
more heterogeneous, more ingeniously interwoven. (a) There is the metaphor
of ears analyzed earlier, representing variously the insatiable desire of an
audience or a poet-patron for flattery (22, 59), creative weakness, failure of
taste, and unwillingness to accept criticism (io8), and the universal, un-self-
1
Although both are based on commonplaces, Seneca, Ep. 53, 67 is probably a para-
phrase and expansion of Persius' third satire:
Dubio et incipiente morbo quaeritur nomen, qui ubi vel talaria coepit intendere et
utrosque distortos pedes fecit, necesse est podagram fateri. Contra evenit in his morbis,
quibus afficiuntur animi: quo quis peius se habet, minus sentit. Non est quod mireris,
Lucili carissime. Nam qui leviter dormit, et species secundum quietem capit et aliquando
dormire se dormiens cogitat: gravis sopor etiam somnia extinguit animumque altius mer-
sit, quam ut in ullo intellectu sui sit. Quare vitia sua nemo confitetur? Quia etiamnunc in
illis est: somnium narrare vigilantis est, et vitia sua confiteri sanitatis indicium est.
Expergiscamur ergo, ut errores nostros coarguere possimus. Sola autem nos philosophia
excitabit, sola somnum excutiet gravem: illi te totum dedica.
2 The most important word-repetitions in Satire 3 are stertimus, stertis (3, 58), palleat,
palles, palles, palles (46, 83, 94, 96). Metaphorical unity is also strengthened, almost jok-
ingly at times, by tenero columbo, tenero in ore (I6, I13), canicula, canicula
(5,
49), miser,
miseri (15, 66), lutum, lutoque, lutatus (23, 6I, 104), raderet, radere
(50, II4), hesternum,
hesterni
(59,
io6), secura, securus (26, 62), excutit, excussit (ioi, II5), conpositas, conpositus
(9I, 104).
Putet, putye (73. 114).
critical folly of mankind (I2I), to which Persius contrasts the cleansed ears
of the enlightened reader (I26). (b) The metaphor of swelling and fatness:
lungs swollen in recital (I4), a ruined hide (23), the burst liver of inspiration
for inspiration's sake (25), the fullness and obesity of false criticism (3I, 5I, 57),
and ironically, the trite declamations against 'dinners of kings' (67) and idiotic
criticism of Vergil's 'swollen' art (96-97). (c) The familiar contrast between
appearance and reality: the universal 'inanity of things' (line i, the stated
theme),
the emptiness of terms of praise, which should be 'shaken out' for
their true content
(50),
laughing behind one's back (58-62), rhetoric without
substance (83-87), 'saliva on the lips' (I04-5); contrast the satirist's pene-
tration into the human heart (II7). (d) The animal-comparisons, of stork, ass,
dog, pig, and ass again: uncritical men sink rapidly to the level of beasts.
(e) The prescribed healing of sick ears and noses, i. e. of bad taste (I07-8, ii8,
I23, I25-6). (f) The dramatic emphasis on repression and explosive power.
(g) The sarcastic 'high' terms enhancing the idea of degeneration: Titos (20),
Romulidae (3I), viyi (36), proceres (52), patricius sanguis (6i); cf. heroas sensus
(69), Remus
(73),
trossulus (82), Romule (87), maiorum (io8). (h) Finally, and
perhaps most important, impotence and homosexuality: the effeminate reciter
(I7-I8), the pornographic titillation of the audience (I9-2I), the liquid
smoothness of pronunciation and style, described in suggestive words, tener
(35,
98, I07), mollis (63), letvis (64, 82), bellum (87), the effeminate sound of
the parodied verses (99-I02), Attis (Io5), the clear accusations of homo-
sexuality (87)
and impotence (I03-4).
We shall go on to consider some of the philosophic and literary attitudes of
Persius, keeping in mind their inseparability from the metaphorical language
in which they are conveyed.
3. Persius and Stoicism
Persius, we said, is generally regarded as a man of obscure style but obvious
Stoic ideas; Probus' vita suggests a good, pious youth who associated mainly
with strong-minded Stoics. Was he himself, then, a doctrinaire Stoic? Against
such a narrow view we shall argue that commonplaces do not make Stoic
themes and Stoic themes do not make Stoic attitudes.
Persius comes closest to admitted Stoicism in Satire 5. This falls into three
parts: a dialogue with Cornutus and general exhortation to study philosophy
(I-72), a spirited defense of the Stoic paradox, all fools are slaves (73-I3I),
and a diatribe against five deadly sins (132-88). In the first part, Persius
makes the metaphorical equation, Persius: Cornutus: Horace: Maecenas.
Tibi nunc hortante Camena
excutienda damus praecordia, quantaque nostrae
pars tua sit, Cornute, animae, tibi, dulcis amice,
Studius in Persius 49I
ostendisse iuvat. Pulsa, dinoscere cautus
quid solidum crepet et pictae tectoria linguae.
There are three Horatian allusions in this passage. Horace's animae dimidium
meae is expanded here to a metaphysical question in the Catullan manner.
Dulcis amice alludes inconspicuously to Horace's independent-dependent rela-
tionship to Maecenas depicted in Epist. I, 7; more strongly, dinoscere cautis
recalls Satire i, 6, where Horace prides himself on his patron's discrimination
(line 5I, praesertim cautum dignos adsumere). The allusion supports Persius'
assertion of Cornutus' philosophical-social discrimination and implies
that he will be worthy of it. The humorous pseudo-astrological passage,
45-5I, reminds us once more of the close friendship between Horace and
Maecenas 1.
One important difference is immediately apparent. A little regretfully,
Horace had denied swearing to the words of any master2; Persius, on the
contrary, stresses his gratitude for a dogmatic upbringing (34-40):
cumque iter ambiguum est et vitae nescius error
diducit trepidas ramosa in compita mentes,
me tibi supposui. Teneros tu suscipis annos
Socratico, Cornute, sinu. Tumfallere sollers
adposita intortos extendit regula mores
et premitur ratione animus vincique laborat
artificemque tuo ducit sub pollice voltum.
Clearly these metaphors are of Stoic education. Not altogether so: the power
of philosophy to 'shape' or 'guide' was a commonplace. But the parable of the
Pythagorean or Prodican ways suggests a Stoic dogma, the ignorant irrespon-
sibility of minors and the development of choice; the deceptive regula, the
tortuous canon laws of the Stoics. The Stoic unity of Persius' and Cornutus'
beliefs is held up against the errorfilled multiplicity of most human lives.
Finally, Cornutus' teachings are described (63- 64) as a sowing of 'Cleanthean
fruit', the seed of the Old Stoa.
1
Persius' model is Horace, Carm. 2, I7, I7-25 (cf. also Ep. 2, 2, I87; CONINGTON
com-
pares Manil. 2, 475). As Professor R. J. GETTY pointed out to me, Libra has a borderline
horoscopic connection with Scorpio, but none with Gemini; one may therefore suspect
that Persius is using (his own) Gemini and (Horace's) Libra for their metaphorical value,
twin souls and balanced thinking, just as Horace perhaps used Capricornus for its Augustan
allusiveness. The Stoa had no consistent attitude on astrology; cf. POHLENZ Op. cit. (above,
p. 486, note 3), I77, 2I7, 233; in any event, Persius felt free, like Horace before him,
to treat it humorously. Compare his light treatment of Pythagoreanism in Sat. 6,
io-ii and his eccentric family arithmetic in Sat. 6, 57-60.
2 Cf. Hor., Ep. I, I, I3-I9; compare Horace's feeling of unsafe voyaging,
ac ne forte roges quo me duce, quo lare tuter . . .
quo me cumque rapit tempestas, deferor hospes . .
to Persius' gratitude for the years of certainty and security given him by Cornutus.
There follows in Part II an obvious example of Cleanthean fruit, the Old
Stoic paradox that all fools are slaves. Who preaches the paradox? Persius,
one imagines, is still speaking in line 73, but the imaginary interlocutor soon
finds himself confronted by an authoritatively belligerent Stoic (85),
)>Mendose colligis, ( inquit
Stoicus hic aurem mordaci lotus aceto.
The speaker could be any Stoic who happened to enter just then, but we
should remember that Persius' ear too was cleansed. The presumably anony-
mous but Persius-like Stoic speaks the rest of the diatribe. The question
remains, how far does Persius himself support the paradox here preached?
No Roman, certainly no Roman satirist could fully accept the Stoic para-
doxes 1. For the Roman, there was the dual affront to humanity and common
sense, which Cicero dramatized rhetorically in his attack on Cato in Pro
Murena and refuted more seriously in Book 4 of De Finibus2; Horace too
decisively rejected the inhumanity and intolerance of omnia
peccata
paria3.
Then there was the pretentiousness of the Stoic claims on behalf of the
sapiens, who must be wise, rich, handsome, a good orator ... and who, indeed,
would dare profess himself as such4? For the satirist, there was the anti-dog-
matic tradition of Bion, the hedonizing Cynic, whose ideal was versatility5;
of Lucilius, who shared in the Romanizing reaction of Panaetius and the
1
For the Stoic paradoxes, see S. V. F. III frg. 524-30 (recte facta et peccata esse
paria nihilque medium inter virtutem et vitium), 545-684 (de sapiente et insipiente).
2
Cicero's scoffing at the Stoic paradoxes in Pro Murena 6o-66 was intended humor-
ously to influence a jury against Cato's Gladstonian inflexibility, not as a serious criticism
of the paradoxes themselves; cf. De Fin. 4, 27, 74,
Non ego tecum iam ita iocabor ut iisdem his de rebus cum L. Murenam te accusante
defenderem. Apud imperitos tum illa dicta sunt; aliquid etiam coronae datum; nunc agen-
dum set subtilius.
Cicero bases his serious argument in De Fin. 4, I9-28 on (a) their unnaturalness and
repugnance to common sense, stemming from an unjustifiable rejection of external goods,
and (b), the practical Roman's contempt for what appeared to be playing with words. Cf.
POHLENZ, Op. cit. (above, p. 486 note 3) for early criticism of the Stoic paradoxes (pp.I7I -3),
and their revival by Hecato (24I-3); Antiochus, Cicero's most influential teacher, liked
the Stoic ideal of the wise man but inconsistently gave value to externals while asserting
that virtue was sufficient for blessedness; he also rejected the equality of sins (pp. 250-2).
3
Cf. Horace's serious attack on omnia peccata paria in Sat. I, 3, 80-I24, and his
gibing at the pretensions of the sapiens in Sat. I, 3' I25-42, Epist. i, i, io6-8.
4
The disavowal by the later Stoics of the Either/Or, the abrupt chasm between sapien-
tes and stulti, and their emphasis on the proficientes, offered a way out. Cf. the three degrees
of advancement discussed in Seneca, Ep. 75, 8, ii. Never claiming to be a sapiens, Seneca
thought of sapientia as an almost unattainable ideal; cf. Ep. 42, i, the wise man may arise
every 500 years, like the phoenix; only a few noble souls, like Cato and Laelius, might be
honored by the title of sapientes.
r
See especially the diatribe ai.
avTaLeoe(ag
in 0. HENSE, Teletis Reliquiae, 2. ed.
Tiubingen I909, II 5-i6, and HENsE's remarks, pp. 75-78, 8i.
Middle Stoa against the extreme Cynicism of the Old'; finally, of Horace, who
was 'bound to swear to the words of no master' and knew positively that the
sapiens was human, could catch a bad cold.
Yet Cicero defended the Stoic paradoxes convincingly 2, and Horace and
Persius made use of them. Why did they bother? Cicero may have envied the
firm backbone of Stoic intransigence: after all, the more extravagant paradoxes
depend on prior theorems, quod honestum sit, id solum bonum esse, and in quo
virtus sit, ei nihil deesse ad beate vivendum. Somehow these high claims came
closer to the Roman ideal than did the logically more sensible compromises
of the Peripatetics with external goods. For Horace, the paradoxes, every
fool a slave, and every fool a madman, provided amusing gambits for the
dissection of folly; but Horace has his cake and eats it too. In Sat. 2, 3, a
bankrupt would-be suicide and busybody reports a sermon of Stertinius; in
Sat. 2, 7, a slave lectures with truly Aristophanic incongruity on the topic,
every fool a slave, and his Saturnalian liberty quails abruptly before his
master's practical threats. Horace can therefore enjoy a double contrast,
between philosophy and folly, common sense and philosophy. Throughout the
two satires we are aware of his unvoiced appeal to the general opinion of
sensible men.
Against this background we can better judge Persius' own attitude. The
paradox, every fool a slave, serves him too as a satirist's gambit; but why
does he trouble to justify the paradox? Here, it appears, is his real love, the
imaginative contrast between reality and appearance, between the Stoic
vision of inner worth according to natural law and the false outward value-
distinctions supported by Roman practice. We saw how Persius' metaphors
emphasized this contrast. Reading again lines 73-I3I, we feel his indignation
at those unperceptive men who cannot share the imaginative inwardness of
the Socratic vision. The Stoic paradox provides a traditional frame for Per-
sius' essential revelation, of the insubstantiality of most human endeavor3
1
Lucilius, fr. I334-35 (MARX), apparently laughs at Stoic pretensions, perhaps at
preachers of diatribes. Since Panaetius felt that virtue alone was insufficient for blessed-
ness (POHLENZ, Op. cit. [above, p. 486 note 3], I99), the ideal of the sapiens must have lost
much of its effectiveness in the Scipionic Circle.
2
Cicero intended his Paradoxa Stoicorum as a non-serious rhetorical exercise: cf.
prooem.
3: Ego tibi illa, quae vix in gymnasiis et in otio Stoici probant, ludens conieci in com-
munes locos; at the same time, he considers them highly Socratic and full of truth (prooem 4) .
Horace, and to a lesser extent Persius, were probably influenced by Cicero's presentation
of the fifth paradox, on liberty, the one most appealing to Persius' contemporary, Seneca
(cf. Ep. 8, 7; 37 3-4; 47, I7; 5I, 9; 80, 5).
3
One should also note the fairly obvious use of Stoic terminology in Satire
5, esp.
lines 73-I3I: colligis, licet, stultis, officia, ratio, vitiabit, natura, recto, sequenda, evitanda,
sapiens, peccas, stultitia, recti. This Stoic jargon is conspicuously absent from the other
satires.
Adinirably fitted by temperament and belief to please the ears of the
Church Fathers, Persius nonetheless knew his Horatian irony well. In his
pages, like those of his predecessor, philosophy never escapes ridicule
(5, I89-9I):
Dixeris haec inter varicosos centuriones,
continuo crassum ridet Pulfenius ingens
et centum Graecos curto centusse licetur.
Life laughs at philosophers (even the
sapiens
may get a bad cold). But Persius
is subtle; his scoffer is obviously a Philistine, a military cousin, perhaps, of
Trimalchio, who boasted that he 'left thirty millions and never listened to a
philosopher'. The coarseness of his laugh, the varicose veins, seem to illustrate
the wrongheadedness of the anti-intellectual and anti-Hellene. In the last
analysis, his laughter strengthens, not weakens the paradox.
)>To Vice and Folly to confine the jest,
sets half the World, God knows, against the rest;
did not the sneers of more impartial men
at Sense and Virtue, balance all again a.
Self-knowledge, the main precept of Satire 4, is less controversial; but is
it necessarily Stoic? It is certainly Socratic; yet Socrates wears a Stoic beard
(line i), and the contrast between Alcibiades' external splendor and Socrates'
inner worth has much in common with the Stoic paradoxes. Persius appears
to bow out of the satire at the outset (barbatum haec crede magistrum dicere),
but curiously, Alcibiades has received an education strongly reminiscent of
Persius' own (IO-I3):
Scis etenim iustum gemina suspendere lance
ancipitis librae, rectum discernis ubi inter
curva subit vel cum fallit pede regula varo,
et potis es nigrum vitio praefigere theta.
Libra, the [Stoic] balance, was the guiding constellation of Cornutus and
Persius, the Stoic regula taught to Persius was fallere sollers, and the straight
line recalls the straight and narrow path. Not that Alcibiades equals Persius;
he is rather a figure of every man who knows the good but hesitates to follow
it. The potential backslider in Satire 5, II5 -I7 was surrendered to the 'shrewd
fox in the vapid heart;' so here Alcibiades to the animal within.
In Satire 3, our judgment of Persius' attitudes depends largely on our
solution of the problem of speakers. If stertimus and the other first person
plurals be taken as ironic substitutes for the second person singular, then
Persius is presenting a sketch of Every student, physically torpid and mentally
lethargic, being aroused by an irate, anonymous tutor (who may or may not be
identical with unus comitum). The recalcitrant student is summoned to study
philosophy; he knows the good, has had a Stoic education, and accordingly
his defection from the active pursuit of philosophy is less pardonable than
the utter obliviousness of Natta. The diatribe, 63-ii8, might as well be
preached by the same tutor. HOUSMAN'S view is different: sensitive, profound,
tempting'. He takes stertimus and the other plurals literally: Persius 'the whole
man' presents himself snoring in a deep lethargy, and his 'higher nature'
rebukes his 'lower nature'. Two allusions support this view. One is Horatian:
in Sat. 2, 3, Horace presented himself as a lazy and slow writer incited to
action by the interloper, Damasippus, who goes on to preach the diatribe. Part
of Horace's success lay in his ironical, indirect application of philosophical
correction to himself; his 'we' is gentle, modest, didactic2. Also-a point
overlooked by HoUSMAN-the lines on the youth's education suggest the
Stoic training of Persius in Satire 5 and Alcibiades-Persius in Satire 4
(3,
52;
56-57):
haut tibi inexpertum curvos deprendere mores ...
et tibi quae Samios diduxit littera ramos
surgentem dextro monstravit limite callem.
HoUSMAN's deep poetic intuition is impressive when used in the analysis of
a critical problem. One may ask, however, if it is any more necessary to see
the youth in Satire 3 as 'Persius' than Alcibiades in Satire 4 or tu in Satire
5, II5-I8 (whe e the preacher speaks as though confronted now with an
individual, nowrwith an anonymous multitude). Evidently, there are three
important voices in Satire 3. The first is that of the satirist, who sets the
scene (line i) and introduces the other voices in his mime3. The second voice
I
See HOUSMAN, op. cit. (above, p, 477 note 3), I6- I8, an analysis initially designed to
make sense of findor in line 9 without playing games with punctuation, HOUSMAN runs into
trouble by too literally attributing lines 44-5 I to the ))reminiscent portion(( of Persius'
mind; did Persius' father actually hear him declaiming at school? Or his stepfather? The
vita makes both suppositions sound unlikely. See the observations on HOUSMAN'S view
made by J. TATE, >Was Persius a Micher? (, CR. 42, I928, 63-64, and )>Persius no Micher, e
CR. 43, 1929, 56-59, the latter in answer to G. B. A. FLETCHER, >>Was Persius not a
Micher? (e, CR. 42, 1928, I67-68.
2 The modest-didactic 'we' has a Greek origin; cf. the remarks of HENSE,
op.
cit. (above
P.492
note
5),
20-22, on Teles' use of
',us
Cf. the remarks of R. BROWER, Alexander pope
(Oxford 1959), I86, on Horace's )>happy faculty of including himself among his victims.
even tu can be ))like an inner self in another role e. Seneca makes his tact rather more obvious
in Ep. 27, I-2:
Non sum tam improbus, ut curationes aeger obeam, sed tamquam eodem valetudinario
iaceam, de communi tecum malo conloquor et remedia communico. Sic itaque me audi,
tamquam mecum loquar: in secretum te meum admitto et te adhibito mecum exigo. Clamo
mihi ipse ...
8
G. L. HENDRICKSON, The Third Satire of Persius, CP. 23, I928, 332, argues that
Persius is treating himself as a dramatic character under the title of unus comitum, but he
hesitates to accept HOUSMAN'S identification of the student too with Persius. One wonders
why HENDRICKSON did not apply to Satire 3 his good comments on the 'mimetic monolo-
gue' in The First Satire of Persius, CP. 23, I928, I03-6.
is of a student, hot-tempered, impatient of effort and criticism, whose back-
ground and education might recall Persius' own. The third is of a critic. It
is the voice of conscience, cast dramatically in the cliche-situation of the
philosopher at the rich man's door'. The resemblance to the author of the
person corrected rather than the corrector is an Horatian indirection, a placa-
tion of the reader through ironic self-criticism, and a refusal to accept full
responsibility for any sermon as such. Undoubtedly, Persius considered the
avoidance of dogmatism a prerequisite of sincerity.
This is not to say that Persius found the content of the sermon embar-
rassing, only the form. The themes of Satire 3 are 'Socratic', common, uncon-
troversial like those of 5 and
4:
'Awake and study philosophy, or the doctor
will come too late'. Lucretius, Horace, Seneca said the same thing. Only the
coloring of the satire brings Stoicism to mind. Stoic ethics and theology are
shadowed forth in lines 67-72, and the meaning of the satire depends in part
on the specifically Stoic assumption of the irresponsibility of childhood and
the greater culpability of the men who should know better.
The uncertainty of speakers in Satire 3 and the commonness of its themes
should suffice to discourage us from branding Persius unhesitatingly as a
Stoic. But we have also to reckon again with Philistine laughter (77-87):
Hic aliquis de gente hircosa centurionum
dicat: 'quod sapio satis est mihi. Non ego curo
esse quod Arcesilas aerumnosique Solones
obstipo capite etfigentes lumine terram,
murmura cum secum et rabiosa silentia rodunt
atque exporrecto trutinantur verba labello,
aegroti veteris meditantes somnia: gigni
de nihilo nihilum, in nihilum nil
posse
reverti.
Hoc est quod palles? Cur quis non prandeat hoc est?'
His popbulus ridet, multumque torosa iuventus
ingeminat tremulos naso
crispante
cachinnos.
Of course, the centurion convicts himself out of his own mouth. He shamelessly
confuses Sceptics, Epicureans, possibly Pythagoras himself with the Stoics;
one would hardly expect the 'stinking tribe of centurions' to be conversant
with such matters. His accusation of pallor is countered in Persius' subsequent
parable of the sick man (the non-philosopher) who denies his sickness and
calls his adviser paler than himself. The guffawing mob and the musclebound
young playboys with the effeminate laughter are hardly creditable witnesses.
Is there, on the hand, a 'grain of truth' in the centurion's attack? Aegroti
veteris ... somnia may recall an attack in Varro (Eum., fr. I5, RIESE),
I
That we should always live as if a mentor were beside us is a not specifically Stoic
commonplace frequently found in Seneca (cf. Ep. II, 9; 25, 5; 32, I).
Postremo nemo aegrotus quicquam somniat
tam infandum, quod non aliquis dicat philosophus.
To the man of the world, philosophers are toilsome, unworldly people, their
eyes not on human things. They certainly weigh their words; one thinks of
the tendency to quaestiunculae and 'logophily' that Seneca, for one, found so
boring. Saviour for men's ills though she be, Dame Philosophy with a Stoic
beard is still a fair target for laughter. The question is, would a doctrinaire
Stoic have tolerated such laughter?
Of the remaining three satires, two are completely unorthodox and one
has slightly Stoic coloring. Satire 2 approaches the Stoic paradox, all fools
are impious, by way of numerous commonplaces about vicious and foolish
prayers which may be found more fully elaborated in Seneca's letters 1.
The satire has great force. Unusual spirituality shows through the shadow-
substance metaphor, the bitter outcry (6I-63),
0 curvae in terris animae et caelestium inanis,
quid iuvat hoc, templis nostros immittere mores
et bona dis ex hac scelerata ducere
pulpa?
Although, however, Jove wears a stolida barba and Persius uses occasional
Stoic terminology, we should hardly construct the syllogism, ))The Stoics
take Jove seriously, Persius takes Jove seriously, therefore Persius is a Stoic ((.
And non-Stoics too, one suspects, might feel nostalgia for Numa's earthen-
ware pots, a simpler and saner way of life.
Satire i has nothing to do with philosophy, let alone Stoicism; indeed,
metaphors once used of philosophy are applied here to literature. A 'Cynic'
appears, but only at the end, to have his beard pulled by a prostitute. Life
still laughs at philosophers and Persius at life. But significantly, the antidote
for the asses' ears is not an adherence to the study of philosophy, but rather
an 'infusion' of good literature and good criticism.
There remains Satire 6. This may be late; it is certainly mellow in tone,
like Horace's Epistle 2, 2. Could Chrysippus' shade have emerged from the
bookshelf, his judgment would surely have been, Horatianus es non Stoicus.
The satire treats of the right use of wealth, duly attacking both avarice and
extravagance; but unlike his balanced criticism of Avaritia and Luxuria in
Satire 5, Persius concentrates now on right enjoyment. Significantly, ungue
has shifted in value from a minus to a plus symbol. The thought of that Hora-
tian figure, the greedy heir, prompts Persius to grasp life's pleasures while he
may, and with a certain willful insipientia. His reflections on wealth and his
bitter argument with the imagined heir are closer to 'eheu fugaces' than to
any of the sevenhundred volumes of Chrysippus. Too, Satire 6 differs in imagery
1
Cf. especially Seneca, Ep. 3I, II; 4I, i, the latter probably influenced in treatment
by Persius.
Hermes 90,4
32
from the others. There is no latent disease, no perversion, no strong contrast
between appearance and reality. Instead there is a dominant metaphor of
land and sea: the sea may cause shipwreck, like misfortune; if it 'winters',
one may retreat to a warm shore (compare Lucretius' shores of light, an image
of life). Land supplies all good things; one should draw upon it to the utmost,
free to use capital as well as income (nunc et de caespite vivo frange aliquid).
Our ties to the land make us all'sons of earth'; we must submit to the kinship
of humanity. Taken together, land and sea are metaphors of the human con-
dition, Persius' deductions from which are thoroughly un-Stoic.
Looking over the satires, it would seem a bad oversimplification to brand
Persius a Stoic moralist. He clearly identifies himself in Satire 5 as a [sometime]
Stoic student and there are hints of this education in Satires 4 and 3. His use
of commonplaces does not make him less of a Stoic; Seneca writes mostly in
commonplaces, even quoting the 'enemy' Epicurus at his pleasure. One must
insist, however, that Persius is a satirist first and a Stoic afterwards. He
knows how to laugh at the Stoic preachers, from whom he regularly disasso-
ciates himself. If he shows a fondness for the Stoic paradoxes and for the
metaphor, often used by Stoics, of latent disease, it is because these follow
from the basic Socratic contrast between appearance and reality, the contrast
which above all others is dear to the satirist's heart.
4. Persius' New Idea of Satire
Horatianism, like Stoicism, served Persius as a point of departure, not
an infallible guide. We noted earlier that in Satire
5
Persius implicitly com-
pares his own relationship to Cornutus to that of Horace and Maecenas.
Indirectly too, he professes himself a follower of Horace's literary standards.
Cornutus 'reminds' him (5-I8) of the defects of the grand style. To the
pretensions of grandiose phrases without substance, trite epic or tragic subject-
matter, and 'mists from Helicon' generally, he opposes Horace's method
and purpose in writing satire:
Verba togae sequeris iunctura callidus acri,
ore teres modico, pallentis radere mores
doctus et ingenuo culpam defigere ludo.
Persius' style, that is, will be that recommended in ars poetica: ordinary words
in more than ordinary combination. The moderate rounding of the mouth
suggests moderation of tone and style as opposed to grandiloquence, which
Persius envisions satirically as a physical distortion (implying, as often, a
mental one 1). The purpose of satire is to nail down guilt; a non-Horatian image,
radere mores suggests a surgical operation. Ingenuo and ludo imply the standard
1
Compare the complex mouth imagery in Sat. 5,
i -
i8.
of liberal humor to which Horace adhered. Taken together, the three lines
represent a tentative Horatian program .
The Horatian mode soon appeared to Persius inadequate to the age of
Nero, both in style and in content. For the first, Horace had criticized Lucilius
for want of polish: he admired the inventor for his powerful but rude ingenium
but found his ars wanting by Augustan standards (Sat. i, IO,
68-7*):
si foret hic nostrum fato dilatus in aevum,
detereret sibi multa, recideret omne quod ultra
perfectum traheretur, et in versu faciendo
saepe caput scaberet vivos et roderet unguis.
It never occurred to Horace that the virtue of iunctura might be carried to
excess, an exaggerated smoothness pleasing to the ear, fairly mechanical in
quasi-Ovidian construction, lacking in substance and Roman vigor. In Satire
5 Persius ridiculed the grand style as swollen and insubstantial; in Satire i it
is the anti-classical pretentiousness of the Neronian neo-Alexandrians that
draws his fire. He answers the claim of his contemporaries (line 92),
sed numeris decor est et iunctura addita crudis,
by parodying their 'smooth' effusions and by relating the critical terms, mollis,
tener, levis, and the praise, belle, to his picture of general effeminacy in society
and the State: an, Romule, ceves? Even a defendant at trial talks in 'shaven
antitheses'.
Persius required new vigor of content as well as form. To him, Horace's
most significant deviation from Lucilius must have been the substitution of
irony for invective: Lucilius lashed the city, Horace tickled his friends' ribs.
In Nero's time, the rapier may have seemed less effective than the bludgeon.
Horace claimed descent from Old Comedy, from Eupolis, Cratinus, Aristo-
phanes, but his allegiance evidently lay with the New, whose moral standards
were tolerance, flexibility, and mutual understanding. Loving as he did liberal
humor and the 'plain style', he kept his eye on Menander, not Aristophanes.
The diseased ears, however, of Nero's time required an alcoholic infusion of
stronger proof, the nakedly clear, uproariously funny revelations of an Aristo-
phanes or perhaps a Lucilius. It was time again for invective, for the horse
laugh, for some eilliberal' fun; but with the re-entry of invective into Roman
satire the grand style raised up its un-Horatian head again. The sequel is
Juvenal.
1
Persius' debt in Satire
i
to Horace, Sat. 2,
i
and Ep. 2, 3 (ars poetica), is discussed
by FISKE, 'Lucilius and Horace,' (above, p. 480 note 3), I25-6, I28-3I; the debt of Hor.,
Ep. 2, 3 to Lucilius and its influence on Persius discussed by FISKE, 'Lucilius,' (above, p. 48o
note 3), I-3b. For ore teres modico, cf. Ep. 2, 3, 323; iunctura callidus acri alludes to
callida iunctura
(Ep.
2, 3, 47-48, cf. 242). Culpam defigere recalls Hor., Sat. r,
4,
3, Ep. 2, I,
I47ff. For ingenuo ludo, see the discussion by FISKE, 'Lucilius and Horace' (above, p. 480
note 3), of Socratic humor (90-IO2), ludus (II7-8), and ironic humor in Horace (I26).
32*
All ages of art must end; classical yields to baroque or romantic. In any
event, Persius cared too much for originality to be another Horace; but also
the age of Nero was not the age of Augustus. Its needs were different. Horace
wrote for the equites, middle-men of good general taste, neither professionals
nor illiterates; more specifically, he was spokesman for the literary and social
standards of the Vergilian circle and the other true critics named in Satire
I, io. Under Augustus' benign rule, he extended his criticism to the Roman
world at large. For Augustus now read Nero; for Maecenas, a Stoic opposition
that Persius knew well; for an appreciative and critical audience, a few cleansed
ears, or none (aut duo aut nemo). Persius wrote, too, in an age characterized
by explosiveness of sentiment and violence of expression. Evidently, a non-
Horatian age deserved non-Horatian satire. By reinvigorating the clever,
tickling irony of Horace with the unsubtle clarity of an occasional Lucilian
whiplash, Persius showed the way to Juvenal and ultimately to Dryden and
to Pope.
Most significant is Persius' new idea of the purpose of satire. Like Horace's
Satires I, 4 and 2, i, his Satire i is an apology for the genre. But whereas
Horace justified himself ironically and negatively-he was making little notes
for his own self-improvement, he was unable to sleep, and why should he alone
of all men and animals be unequipped for selfdefense?-Persius regards him-
self as a surgeon and his satire as an operation on the diseased ears of mankind.
More implicitly, we find another catharsis in Satire i. Persius himself is bursting
with a great and wonderful statement; he must speak out; he is repeatedly
frustrated, like the boys forbidden to urinate in public places, or like Midas'
barber with his great secret; finally, the truth emerges with a bang. Satire,
then, not only operates on a sick society but provides a necessary release for
the pent-up feelings of the satirist: facit indignatio versuml.
The reverse side of this indignatio is a very modern isolation. We see it
in Persius' obscure inwardness of metaphor and thought, and again, in his
sense of writing for himself (Sat. I, 2-8):
'Quis leget haec?' Min tu istud ais? Nemo hercule. 'Nemo?'
Vel duo vel nemo. 'Turpe et miserabile'. Quare?
Ne mihi Polydamas et Troiades Labeonem
kraetulerint? Nugae. Non, si quid turbida Roma
1
Lucilius too may have defended his right to speak out: cf. frs. 426, non laudare
hominem quicquam neque mu facere umquam, and 957-8, Mihi necesse est eloqui, nam scio
Amyclas tacendo perisse. Cf. FISKE, 'Lucilius and Horace,' (above, p. 480 note 3), 128-31, on
Lucilius' concern for sincerity. Horace, Sat. 2, i, emphasizes rather the satirist's need to
write; so also Persius in Satire i. M. C. RANDOLPH, The Neo-Classic Theory of the Formal
Verse Satire in England, I700-I750, Diss. Univ. of N. C. Chapel Hill I939, 53, notes that
the Elizabethans analyzed satire as a dual catharsis, (a) an outlet for the 'modest anger'
or 'melancholic humour' of the satirist, (b) a wholesome 'scourging away of moral infec-
tion from the soul of the person satirized'.
Studies in Persius 50I
elevet, accedas examenve inprobum in illa
castiges trutina nec te quaesiveris extra.
Nam Romae quis non-
Why blame the public scale? Only a fool interests himself in popular opinion,
which is based on unreasonable, almost mechanical criteria. Persius' integrity
forbids him to care like Hector for what people will say; Polydamas suggests
the manyvoiced mob, Troiades the effeminate self-styled litterati. Know the
right standard and follow it, says Persius, regardless of public opinion, which
is rightly characterized by. . . asses' ears. He goes on to argue that what we
dignify as inspiration is in reality a foolish urge to show off for posterity:
desire for literary immortality is a poor substitute for genuine standards'.
The main thing is to satisfy oneself. That much achieved, Persius will admit
a larger audience (I26-33), of men whose ears have been 'steamed open'
by Old Comedy and its tradition.
More negatively, the ideals of satire reappear in the choliambic preface,
which requires detailed analysis part by part.
Nec fonte labra prolui caballino
nec in bicipiti somniasse Parnaso
memini, ut repente sic poeta prodirem.
Persius refuses to pay lip-service to the traditional metaphors of poetic inspira-
tion, beginning with Hesiod's dream of initiation by the Muses on Mt. Helicon,
continuing through Callimachus' untouched springs, and adopted variously by
Ennius, Lucretius, Vergil, Horace, and Propertius2. We know from the com-
plexity of his metaphors how Persius feared triteness; here he implies that
talk about inspiration has become trite to the point of meaninglessness. The
untouched springs and the water of Pirene are therefore trammeled, Pegasus
a workhorse, the dream of inspiration a drunken snooze dimly remembered.
Moreover, talk of inspiration misleads us into forgetting the hard work to be
done. One does not 'suddenly emerge' an accomplished poet; even to genuine
ingenium, ars must be added.
Heliconidasque pallidamque Pirenen
illis remitto quorum imagines lambunt
1
Borrowing two images of literary fame from Horace, Persius almost parodies them
here: digito monstrari (from Carm. 4, 3, 22), dictation in the schools (from Ep. I, 20, 17-I8;
see, however, Horace's scorn in Sat. I, IO, 74-75). The evil fate of unsuccessful manuscripts
to wrap fish in, was suggested by Ep. 2, I, 269.
2 See the excellent discussion of Persius' dissent by W. WIMMEL, Kallimachos in Rom,
Hermes Einzelschriften i6, Wiesbaden I960, 309-I1: )>Callimachus' ideas, images, and
teachings had become well-known, ubiquitous, as traditional, academic and unreal as were
once the symbols of the 'grand style;' . . . Persius' new protesting impulse must therefore
come from 'still further under', even from the realm of non-poetry((. WIMMEL also suggests,
PP.
3I3-5, that Satire
5,
I - I8 includes criticism of Callimachean as well as 'grand' ideas.
hederae sequaces; ipse semipaganus
ad sacra vatum carmen adfero nostrum.
Persius not only rejects affectation-the paler-than-thou young poets, whose
creative powers are idiotically judged by their appearance-but he sends
Helicon's rather tired girls back to the great writers long since dead. They
have their ivy, their clinging crowns of immortality. Persius' 'semipaganism'
cuts two ways: like Horace, he modestly or ironically claims for his satire
only borderline poetic value, but unlike Horace, he intimates that his rustic
vigor is an original and genuine contribution to the religious offertory of poets:
carmen adfero nostrum. There is great emphasis on the last word.
Persius now turns from thoughts of his own achievement to general reflec-
tions on poetic creation:
Quis expedivit psittaco suum 'chaere'
picamque docuit verba nostra conari?
Magister artis ingenique largitor
venter, negatas artifex sequi voces.
Quod si dolosi spes refulserit nummi,
corvos poetas
et poetridas picas
cantare credas Pegaseium nectar.
These lines are somewhat nonsensical, but they reflect Persius' true ideals.
Poetry is basically mimetic, he seems to be saying. It is an imitation of life
and a tradition in which one poet's work is shaped by what went before. There
is, unavoidably, a large element of parroting in it, mechanical repetition (the
crow being a plagiarist in fable) of another's work'. What does Persius mean by
ascribing the origin of poetry to the belly? Partly, he is posing as a Philistine (we
have seen him use disguises before, to put preachers in their place). Horace had
ironically attributed his poetic efforts to a need for money (Epistle 2, 2, 26-40);
so Persius here amuses himself with a utilitarian, anti-idealist explanation of the
origin of poetry. But by so doing, he counters airy ideas of poetry, 'mists on Heli-
con', with the down-to-earth, semi-pagan realism of the belly's urge2.
The last four lines allow of various interpretations3. To follow 'voices
denied' makes sense for the mimicking birds, but what of the poets? Persius
1
Horace, Ep. I, 3,
18-20, applies to a plagiarist friend the fable of the crow and the
borrowed plumage; compare also Pindar's chattering daws, no match for the naturally
inspired eagle. Chaire, if reminiscent of Lucilius, fr. 88-94, would suggest the pretentious-
ness of trying to be what one is not.
2 Then, too, in his inaugural lecture, 'The Name and Nature of Poetry', HOUSMAN
argued (to the dismay, it is said, of some budding New Critics) that poetry was indeed
written #from the pit of the stomach ((.
3
The commentators mostly agree that Persius is being ironic here; cf. CONINGTON'S
analysis: )>My antecedents, I believe, were not poetical: if I appear at the feast of the
poets, it is only on sufferance. After all, one can sing without inspiration: at least parrots
and magpies do (. Persius doesn't say that he writes for money but >hints it in order to
may mean that the belly's desire usually furnishes a substitute for inspiration,
pushing poetasters to efforts beyond their natural ability. Compare the more
playful apes of the witches' kitchen in Goethe's Faust:
Nun ist es geschehn!
wir reden und ge/n,
wir horen und reimen,
und wenn es uns gliickt,
und wenn es sich schickt,
so sind es Gedanken !
Possibly, too, Persius may be satirizing the deluded critic whose belly forces
him, like the stuffed clients in Satire i, to praise his patron's bad efforts'.
The prospect of 'delusive coin' might even lead him genuinely to mistake
crow-poets for true ones, their cawing for real 'Pegaseian nectar'. This last
image suggests real poetry: nectar, like the honey of laborious bees, is an Hora-
tian metaphor for true art (cf. Odes 4, 2, 27-32). It is, after all, bad poetry
and bad criticism that made Pegasus into a workhorse. For all his ironic
denials of the power of inspiration, the ideal, Pegaseium nectar, talent joined
to art, still shines in the satirist's heart.
The fourteen choliambs serve both as preface to the satires and as a last,
personal statement. As preface they herald the proud, Pindaric claim for
which Persius has suffered: not to be a crow-poet. Cut off from commonplaces,
he is not always understandable, but what he says he makes his own: carmen
adfero
nostrum. Although a bee, he cannot be content to repeat the Matine
labors of Horace: he cannot therefore allude to Horace without adding some-
thing of his own. When he borrows a metaphor, he must improve on it. When
he borrows an idea, he must relate himself to it anew. Most of what seems
obscurity in Persius is, on closer examination, evidence of a creative mind at
work.
As final statement, the choliambs show Persius' isolation and his moder-
nity. We have not attempted to trace the development of his thought, lacking
as we do any certain evidence for the chronology of his satires2. We may,
ridicule his contemporaries by affecting to classify himself with them <. NEMETHY'S inter-
pretation is very similar.
1
Grammatically, the object of credas is of course corvos poetas et poetridas picas. But
Persius is borrowing, asHENSS, Op. cit. (above, p. 484 note 3), 29I, pointed out, fromHor., Ep.
I, I9, 44,fidis enim manare poetica mella, where the subject of manare is the same as that
of fidis and so (as in Greek) daringly left unexpressed. The subject of Persius' cantare is
therefore poetically, if not grammatically ambiguous. Nectar is apparently an exaggeration
of the usual, expected mel.
2 The order of the satires is generally disputed, except that Sat. I. is generally agreed
to be late. MARMORALE, op. cit. (above, p.476 note I), 322, suggests 3, 4, 2, 6, 5, I; VILLE-
NEUVE,
Op. cit. (above, p. 479 note 3), i86, thinks 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, I. My own arrangement
would be 5,
(4,
3, 2, 6 in any order), I.
504 KENNETH J. RECKFORD, Studies in Persius
however, take Satires 5 and i as hypothetical polarities. In Satire 5, Persius
more or less professes himself an Horatian in literary matters and a Cornutan
Stoic in philosophy. The most personal part of the satire is a dual dedication
of his work, directly to Cornutus, indirectly to Horace; the remainder is an
exposition of Socratic themes with strong Stoic coloring, to which Persius
lends almost full assent. Satires 4, 3, and 2, for all their originality- and note
how sophisticated 3 is in structure, compared to 5-are in the Socratic molde,
and Satire 6 in the Horatian. Compared to these, Satire 1 stands very much
alone. Like Horace's satire 2, I, it is an 'apology' for the satirist's work that
turns out to be no apology at all. Persius begins by moralizing,
0 curas hominum! 0 quantum est in rebus inane!,
but the interruption of his imaginary interlocutor cuts off his Socratic, con-
ventional train of thought, forcing him to confront a new and more personal
issue, his purpose and standards in writing satire. Taken for granted in Satire
5,
the question of how and why to write becomes central in Satire i.
This is not to suggest that Persius' satire has turned wholly inward upon
itself. In attacking false standards of criticism, he touches upon a social disease:
in his view, as in Horace's, what is good or bad for literature is good or bad for
society. Lack of true criticism goes hand in hand with bad patron-client rela-
tionships, with deception, hidden mockery, dangerous frustration. Lack of
literary vigor is inseparable from lack of moral fibre, from a spiritual homo-
sexuality now pervading Rome, chief symptom of which is an asinine delicacy
of the ears. The cleansing agent for society as for literature is honest, frank,
open criticism, such as the satirist can provide. His work is more than excus-
able, it is necessary.
True criticism has its price. Persius cannot expect general approbation;
he will not flatter those ears. His writings must therefore be self-sufficient. In
Satire i, he rejects literary immortality, at least as a conscious goal; the right
audience may be expected to listen to him. His choliambs are the ultimate
expression of his isolation. Painfully selfweaned from the fostering support of
Cornutus and Horace, he finally dismisses the too promiscuous girls of Helicon.
He is left, quite modernly, on his own '.
Washington KENNETH J. RECKFORD
I
I am greatly indebted to R. A. BROOKS for his perceptive thoughts, as yet unpubli-
shed, on Persius' imagery, to G. NAMETHY for the good companionship of his commentary,
and to my students in Latin 105 for their interest and suggestions.

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Studies in Persius

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