marbles, with the heads of an elderly man and woman'. Both these persons were Greeks, connected, as is clear from the gentilician names they bore, with Roman families of distinction. Paetus Thrasea is mentioned by Juvenal, with his son-in-law, Helvidius Priscus (S. v. 36). His character was that of an honest man in times of the worst corruption, and his affection for Persius, which the Grammarian says lasted nearly ten years, and therefore only ended with his death (for Thrasea survived him four years), was a strong testimony to the poet's goodness. It is said they sometimes travelled together, but we are not told where they travelled. There is no trace in the writings of Persius of his having been out of Italy. Thrasea was put to death with scarcely the shadow of a pretext, A.D. 66. The Senate condemned him. under compulsion. Arria, the wife of Thrasea, was the daughter of Arria mentioned above, and it was for her Persius wrote the lines on her mother's death which were destroyed with his other juvenile productions. The relationship between Arria and Persius is not known. His father, it appears, left a sister, and it would seem that she lived with her sister-in-law after Flaccus' death. According to the amended text of the life Persius had an only sister. It does not appear whether his mother had any family by her second marriage. His love for these ladies and his dutiful attention to them are represented as most exemplary, and to their society no doubt, as Jahn says, he owed much of that maidenly modesty and gentleness of character which the Grammarian attributes to him. That he was carefully watched and kept from temptation in boyhood may be inferred from what he says to Cornutus, S. v. 32 sqq., and the same care was shown in the selection of that good man for his teacher. His father when he died left him under a 'tutor,' whose name is not mentioned, but who there is every reason to suppose discharged his trust faithfully, for Persius died rich, leaving his mother and sister between them two millions of sesterces' in ready money. His death took place on the 24th November, A.D. 62, at his own country house, eight miles from Rome, on the Appian road, which was so lined with the villas of wealthy Romans that Bovillae, four miles farther on, was sometimes called a suburb. (See note on S. vi. 52.) He wanted ten days to complete his twenty-eighth year. A paragraph in the memoir, which is from a later hand than the first part, says he died of a disease of the stomach. This is probably an invention, and 2 About £16,000. 1 Κλαύδιος ζητὴρ ̓Αγαθήμερος ἐνθάδε κεῖμαι, there is no other evidence of the cause of his death. From the company he kept, his political feelings must have been well known, and had he lived longer he might have shared the fate of his most intimate friends, of whom Thrasea, Seneca, Lucanus, were put to death, and Cornutus was banished. He left behind him, besides the productions of his early years above referred to, no more than the six Satires in this book, the last of which, as appears plain to me from the ending, as well as from the obvious meaning of the Grammarian's words, he must have left unfinished. These he probably had communicated only to his intimate friends during his life; but after his death, Cornutus, whom he probably left his executor, having slightly revised the Satires, gave them to Caesius Bassus, at his (Bassus') request, to edit. Attempts have been made to trace the corrections of Cornutus, one of those tasks that certain understandings delight in. The famous line noticed by the Grammarian (S. i. 121) may very well have been written by Persius, as he says; and though his editor could not have published it without bringing disgrace and perhaps destruction on himself, and the alteration may therefore be excused, the verse cannot be said to have been mended by the substitution of the words that now form part of the text. When the volume was published it immediately attracted attention, and was much read and admired. Since Horace no one of any ability had put forth writings of this kind, and in these Satires there was found much to remind the public of their favourite poet, combined with a great deal of originality and genius. Persius' intimate acquaintance with Horace's poems appears in a great number of passages, most of which show that unconscious imitation which is the surest sign of the minute study of an author. Casaubon has collected a large number of parallel passages from the two authors, some of which may perhaps be a little strained. Persius is said by his biographer to have been slow in composition. This is very likely. His verse does not flow in a rapid and muddy stream like that of Lucilius, as Horace describes him (S. i. 4), but as he says himself" caedit pluteum et demorsos sapit ungues" (S. i. 106). He has evidently taken Horace's advice (S. i. 10. 69 sqq.) too literally, and corrected himself till his language has become short and the ideas condensed, to a degree that makes the sense in some places obscure. Modern readers have found great fault with the poet on this account. But I think the obscurity has been exaggerated, and that, except a few passages, the Satires are as free from difficulty as most of Juvenal's'. 3 See note 5. Jul. Scaliger thought Persius wrote obscurely on purpose that fools might admire him. He is very severe on Persius. (See Scal. Poet. vi. c. 6, iii. c. 97.) They were much admired by the ancients, and have been abundantly quoted by Grammarians, by Fathers of the Church, and mediaeval writers. If certain passages are less familiar to modern ears than their fitness for quotation might lead us to expect, it is from the difficulties of the poetry, which have deterred men of our day from reading it as it deserves. The subject of the first Satire which deals with the vicious poetical taste of the day, and has many quotations from, or imitations of, the verses of contemporary writers, would be more interesting and intelligible when it was first published than it is to us, and this Satire alone would create a large demand for the volume. The Epistle to Macrinus comes more home to ourselves as dealing with the worship of God, the selfish or worldly abuse of which is common to all ages. The introduction I have prefixed to the third Satire may perhaps lead some to read it with curiosity, and they will not be disappointed. The more I read it, the more I admire it. Self-ignorance is a large subject which might be better handled than it is in the fourth Satire, and the folly of running after and hoarding money to be squandered by one's heirs is not done as much justice to in the sixth as it probably would have been if the poet had finished it. The fifth is generally considered the best in the book, though I myself prefer the third. In the fifth there is that tribute to the goodness of Cornutus which proves the goodness of the writer and the gracefulness with which he could write. It also shows more of the philosophical school in which Persius had been trained, without however introducing any thing more new than the Stoic doctrine that the only free man is the sage, with which Cicero and Horace had before made their readers familiar. There are more imitations of Horace in this Satire than in any other. A writer of satire may be 'ferus et violens' with his pen, and yet very amiable in manners, as the Grammarian describes Persius to have been. He may also in those days have been chaste and modest, and yet have used language for the exposure of vice which now cannot be used, or even read without discomfort. There is nothing in Persius' style to contradict the pleasing description given of him by his biographer, which probably was quite true. More than one gem now in existence has been supposed to represent the handsome features attributed to Persius, but they may be any body, and we must be content with the Grammarian's testimony to his beauty. • Quintilian (x. 1. 94) says, meruit." Martial (iv. 29) says, "Multum et verae gloriae, quamvis uno libro, Persius "Saepius in libro numeratur Persius uno Quam levis in tota Marsus Amazonide." From Dryden's translation of Juv. S. iii. 203, it might be inferred that 'lectus' was a sleeping-bed. But for that, it would hardly be necessary to tell the reader Juvenal means a lectus tricliniaris.' On Juvenal S. vii. 79 it should have been observed, that the age at which the poet Lucan is said to have been put to death, namely, twenty-six, cannot be right, if it be true that he was of the same age as Persius, as stated in his life. Persius was born at the end of A.D. 34, and Lucan was put to death A.D. 65; he must therefore have been about thirty years of age. To the note on Juvenal S. vii. 111 might have been added, if I had seen it in time, an anecdote told by the late Lord Cockburn (Memoirs, p. 136), which, as it may amuse the reader and illustrates my opinion of Juvenal's meaning, I add here. Speaking of the Scotch advocate George Fergusson (Lord Hermand), he says, "His eagerness made him froth and splutter so much in his argumentation, that there is a story to the effect that, when he was once pleading in the House of Lords, the Duke of Gloucester, who was about fifty feet from the bar, and always attended when Mr. George Fergusson, the Scotch counsel,' was to speak, rose and said with pretended gravity, I shall be much obliged to the learned gentleman if he will be so good as to refrain from spitting in my face.'" As to the date of S. viii. (Juvenal), and the force of nuper' in v. 120, the reader is referred to the Life, wherein the dates of the several Satires, so far as they can be conjectured, are more fully discussed than in the Introductions. There are several places in which former or subsequent notes should have been referred to. These omissions the reader will be able in great measure to correct by means of the Index. D. JUNII JUVENALIS SATIRARUM LIBER PRIMUS. SATIRA I. INTRODUCTION. THIS satire, for reasons stated in v. 47, could not have been written before A.D. 100, and was probably not written long after that date. Heinrich, whose judgment I have a great respect for, says it is not so much a satire as a preface or introduction to a volume of satires. It is certainly a satire as severe as any in the book. Juvenal had probably written others before it, but I do not see enough in this poem to entitle it to be called a preface. He says all the passions of men from the flood downwards are the hodge-podge of his book-" nostri farrago libelli" (v. 86)—and he has touched upon a good many of them in this satire, which may be the 'libellus' he means. If not, he must have been intending to publish a collection, for libellus' must mean something definite, either one poem or a collection. He begins with supposing himself persuaded by some person not to write, as Horace pretends with Trebatius (S. ii. 1). But the times are such, he says, that he cannot help it; and while there are so many indifferent poets spouting their lines every where, he may as well write as others. He then goes into a detail of some of the vile features of society: among which are the voluntary degradation of women; their lewdness; the preferment of slaves and informers; the impunity of robbers, and forgers, and murderers; men selling the honour of their wives; women poisoning their husbands; incest and adultery undisguised; avarice, gambling, extravagance, gluttony; the contempt and neglect of the poor by the rich; magistrates degraded into beggars. The burst about the poets and their recitations is only a way of introducing humourously the graver matters that follow. A good deal of what was recited was no doubt bad enough; but Juvenal's quarrel was not with his literary brethren, whose cause he takes up, as well as their recitations, in the seventh satire. They have in reality nothing to do with the satire as such, though Juvenal pretends they have. The arguments prefixed to the MSS. treat this satire as a preface to the rest. Ruperti, on the other hand, thinks it was written before all the others, and Dryden that it is “the natural groundwork of all the rest;" for "herein he confines himself to no one subject, but strikes indifferently at all men in his way: in every following satire he has chosen some particular moral which he would inculcate, and lashes some particular vice or folly." I see no proofs one way or the other. It might have been written first or last for any evidence I can find in the poem itself, irrespective of the sign of the date noticed above, which puts it later perhaps than some. ARGUMENT. Am I always to be a listener, and shall I never pay these poets back in their own coin? I know all their subjects by heart; all of them, bad and good, handle the same, till the B |