Aulus Persius Flaccus (; 4 December 3424 November 62 AD) was a

Roman Roman or Romans most often refers to: * Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD *Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a lett ...

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems (oral or w ...

and

satirist This is an incomplete list of writers, cartoonists and others known for involvement in satire – humorous social criticism. They are grouped by era and listed by year of birth. Included is a list of modern satires. Under Contemporary, 1930-196 ...

of Etruscan origin. In his works, poems and

satire Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming o ...

s, he shows a Stoic wisdom and a strong criticism for what he considered to be the stylistic abuses of his poetic contemporaries. His works, which became very popular in the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

, were published after his death by his friend and mentor, the Stoic philosopher

Lucius Annaeus Cornutus Lucius Annaeus Cornutus ( grc, Ἀνναῖος Κορνοῦτος), a Stoic philosopher, flourished in the reign of Nero (c. 60 AD), when his house in Rome was a school of philosophy. Life Cornutus was a native of Leptis Magna in Libya, but res ...

Life

According to the ''Life'' contained in the manuscripts, Persius was born into an equestrian family at

Volterra Volterra (; Latin: ''Volaterrae'') is a walled mountaintop town in the Tuscany region of Italy. Its history dates from before the 8th century BC and it has substantial structures from the Etruscan, Roman, and Medieval periods. History Volt ...

(Volaterrae, in Latin), a small Etruscan city in the province of

Pisa Pisa ( , or ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower, the ci ...

, of good stock on both parents' side. When six years old he lost his father; his stepfather died a few years later. At the age of twelve Persius came to Rome, where he was taught by

Remmius Palaemon Quintus Remmius Palaemon or Quintus Rhemnius Fannius Palaemon. was a Roman grammarian and a native of Vicentia. He lived during the reigns of Emperors Tiberius and Claudius. Life From Suetonius, we learn that he was originally a slave who ob ...

and the

rhetor Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...

Verginius Flavus The gens Verginia or Virginia was a prominent family at ancient Rome, which from an early period was divided into patrician and plebeian branches. The gens was of great antiquity, and frequently filled the highest honors of the state during the ...

. During the next four years he developed friendships with the Stoic

, the lyric poet

Caesius Bassus Gaius Caesius Bassus (d. AD 79) was a Roman lyric poet who lived in the reign of Nero. He was the intimate friend of Persius, who dedicated his sixth satire to him, and whose works he edited (''Schol. on Persius'', vi. I). He had a great reputa ...

, and the poet

Lucan Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (3 November 39 AD – 30 April 65 AD), better known in English as Lucan (), was a Roman poet, born in Corduba (modern-day Córdoba), in Hispania Baetica. He is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of the Imperial ...

. Lucan would become a generous admirer of all Persius wrote. He also became close friends with Thrasea Paetus, the husband of Arria, a relative of Persius's; over the next ten years Persius and Thrasea Paetus shared many travels together. Later, he met Seneca, but was not impressed by his genius. In his boyhood, Persius wrote a

tragedy Tragedy (from the grc-gre, τραγῳδία, ''tragōidia'', ''tragōidia'') is a genre of drama based on human suffering and, mainly, the terrible or sorrowful events that befall a main character. Traditionally, the intention of tragedy ...

dealing with an episode in

Roman history The history of Rome includes the history of the city of Rome as well as the civilisation of ancient Rome. Roman history has been influential on the modern world, especially in the history of the Catholic Church, and Roman law has influenced m ...

, and another work, probably on travel (although this would have been before the travels with Thrasea Paetus). Reading the satires of

Lucilius The gens Lucilia was a plebeian family at ancient Rome. The most famous member of this gens was the poet Gaius Lucilius, who flourished during the latter part of the second century BC.''Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology'', vo ...

made Persius want to write like him, and he set to work on a book of his own satires. But he wrote seldom and slowly; a premature death (''uitio stomachi'') prevented him from completing the book. He has been described as having "a gentle disposition, girlish modesty and personal beauty", and is said to have lived a life of exemplary devotion towards his mother Fulvia Sisennia, his sister and his aunt. To his mother and sister he left his considerable fortune. Cornutus suppressed all his work except the satires, to which he made some slight alterations before handing it over to Bassus for editing. It proved an immediate success.

Doubts over his biography

The ''scholia'' add a few details—on what authority is, as generally with such sources, very doubtful. The ''Life'' itself, though not free from the suspicion of interpolation and undoubtedly corrupt and disordered in places, is probably trustworthy. The manuscripts say it came from the commentary of Valerius Probus, no doubt a learned edition of Persius like those of

Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; traditional dates 15 October 7021 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He composed three of the most famous poems in Latin literature: th ...

and

Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...

by this same famous "grammarian" of

Berytus ) or Laodicea in Canaan (2nd century to 64 BCE) , image = St. George's Cathedral, Beirut.jpg , image_size = , alt = , caption = Roman ruins of Berytus, in front of Saint George Greek Orthodox Cathedral in moder ...

, the poet's contemporary. The only case in which it seems to conflict with the ''Satires'' () themselves is in its statement as to the death of Persius's father. The declaiming of a ''suasoria'' in his presence (Sat. 3.4 sqq.) implies a more mature age than that of six in the performer. But ''pater'' might here mean "stepfather," or Persius may have forgotten his own autobiography, may be simply reproducing one of his models. The mere fact that the ''Life'' and the ''Satires'' agree so closely does not of course prove the authenticity of the former. One of the points of harmony is, however, too subtle for us to believe that a forger evolved it from the works of Persius: the ''Life'' gives the impression of a "bookish" youth, who never strayed far from home and family. This is also the picture drawn by the ''Satires''; many of the characters that Persius creates have the same names as characters found in Horace. A keen observer of what occurs within his narrow horizon, Persius did not shy away from describing the seamy side of life (cf. e.g. such hints as ''Sat.'' iii.110), especially the relationship between excesses of consumption and moral failure; he shows little of Horace's easy-going acceptance of human weaknesses. Perhaps the sensitive, homebred nature of Persius can also be glimpsed in his frequent references to ridicule, whether of great men by street gamins or of the cultured by

philistines The Philistines ( he, פְּלִשְׁתִּים, Pəlīštīm; Koine Greek ( LXX): Φυλιστιείμ, romanized: ''Phulistieím'') were an ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan from the 12th century BC until 604 BC, whe ...

Montaigne Michel Eyquem, Sieur de Montaigne ( ; ; 28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592), also known as the Lord of Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularizing the essay as a lit ...

mentions Persius several times.

Work

The chief interest of Persius's work lies in its relation to Roman satire in its interpretation of Roman

Stoicism Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded by Zeno of Citium in Athens in the early 3rd century BCE. It is a philosophy of personal virtue ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world, asserting tha ...

, and in its use of the Latin tongue. The influence of Horace on Persius can, in spite of the silence of the ''Life,'' hardly have been less than that of Lucilius. Not only characters, as noted above, but whole phrases, thoughts and situations come direct from him. The resemblance only emphasizes the difference between the caricaturist of Stoicism and its preacher. Persius strikes the highest note that Roman satire reached; in earnestness and moral purpose he rises far superior to the political rancour or good-natured persiflage of his predecessors and the rhetorical indignation of

Juvenal Decimus Junius Juvenalis (), known in English as Juvenal ( ), was a Roman poet active in the late first and early second century CE. He is the author of the collection of satirical poems known as the '' Satires''. The details of Juvenal's life ...

. From him we learn how that philosophy could work on minds that still preserved the depth and purity of the old Roman ''gravitas.'' Some of the parallel passages in the works of Persius and Seneca are very close, and cannot be explained by assuming the use of a common source. Like Seneca, Persius censures the style of the day, and imitates it. Indeed, in some of its worst failings, straining of expression, excess of detail, exaggeration, he outbids Seneca, whilst the obscurity, which makes his little book of not seven hundred lines so difficult to read and is in no way due to great depth of thought, compares poorly with the terse clearness of the ''Epistolae morales''. A curious contrast to this tendency is presented by his free use of "popular" words. As of

Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...

, so of Persius, we hear that he emulated

Sophron Sophron of Syracuse ( grc-gre, Σώφρων ὁ Συρακούσιος, ''fl.'' 430 BC) was a writer of mimes. Sophron was the author of prose dialogues in the Doric dialect, containing both male and female characters, some serious, others humorou ...

; the authority is a late one (the Byzantine

Lydus Lydus ( Ancient Greek: Λυδός), a son of Atys and Callithea, grandson of Manes, and brother of Tyrrhenus or Torybus, is a legendary figure of the 2nd millennium BC who is attested by Herodotus to have been an early king of Lydia, then prob ...

, ''De mag.'' I.41), but we can at least recognize in the scene that opens ''Sat.'' 3 kinship with such work as

Theocritus Theocritus (; grc-gre, Θεόκριτος, ''Theokritos''; born c. 300 BC, died after 260 BC) was a Greek poet from Sicily and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry. Life Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from h ...

' ''Adoniazusae'' and the ''Mimes'' of

Herodas The first column of the Herodas papyrus, showing ''Mimiamb'' 1. 1–15. Herodas or Herondas (Greek: or - the name is spelt differently in the few places where he is mentioned), was a Greek poet and the author of short humorous dramatic ...

. Persius's satires are composed in

hexameter Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...

s, except for the scazons of the short prologue above referred to. The first satire censures the literary tastes of the day as a reflection of the decadence of the national morals. The theme of Seneca's 114th letter is similar. The description of the recitator and the literary twaddlers after dinner is vividly natural, but an interesting passage which cites specimens of smooth versification and the languishing style is greatly spoiled by the difficulty of appreciating the points involved and indeed of distributing the dialogue (a not uncommon crux in Persius). The remaining satires handle in order (2) the question as to what we may justly ask of the gods (cf. '' Second Alcibiades''), (3) the importance of having a definite aim in life, (4) the necessity of self-knowledge for public men (cf. Plato's ''

First Alcibiades The ''First Alcibiades'', also referred to as ''Alcibiades Major'' and abbreviated as ''Alcibiades I'' ( el, Ἀλκιβιάδης αʹ), is a dialogue depicting Socrates in conversation with Alcibiades. It is ascribed to Plato, although scholars ...

''), (5) the Stoic doctrine of liberty (introduced by generous allusions to Cornutus' teaching), and (6) the proper use of money. The ''Life'' tells us that the ''Satires'' were not left complete; some lines were taken (presumably by Cornutus or Bassus) from the end of the work so that it might be ''quasi finitus.'' This perhaps means that a sentence in which Persius had left a line imperfect, or a paragraph which he had not completed, had to be omitted. The same authority says that Cornutus definitely blacked out an offensive allusion to the emperor's literary taste, and that we owe to him the reading of the manuscripts in Sat. i.121,—"''auriculas asini ''quis non'' (for ''Mida rex'' ) habet!''" Traces of lack of revision are, however, still visible; cf. e.g. v.176 (sudden transition from ambition to superstition) and vi.37 (where criticism of Greek ''doctores'' has nothing to do with the context). The parallels to passages of Horace and Seneca are recorded in the commentaries: in view of what the ''Life'' says about

, the verbal resemblance of ''Sat.'' iii.3 to '' Phars.'' x.163 is interesting. Examples of bold language or metaphor: i.25, ''rupto iecore exierit caprificus,'' 60, ''linguae quantum sitiat canis''; iii.42, ''intus palleat,'' 81, ''silentia rodunt''; v.92, ''ueteres auiae de pulmone reuello.'' Passages like iii.87, 100 sqq. show elaboration carried beyond the rules of good taste. "Popular" words: ''baro'', ''cerdo'', ''ebullire'', ''glutto'', ''lallare'', ''mamma'', ''muttire'', ''obba'', ''palpo'', ''scloppus''. Fine lines, etc., in i.116 sqq., ii.6 sqq., 61 sqq., 73 sqq., iii.39 sqq.

Authorities

The manuscripts of Persius fall into two groups, one represented by two of the best of them, the other by that of Petrus Pithoeus, so important for the text of

. Since the publication of J. Bieger's ''de Persii cod. pith. recte aestimando'' (Berlin, 1890) the tendency has been to prefer the tradition of the latter. The first important editions were: (1) with explanatory notes: Isaac Casaubon (Paris, 1605, enlarged edition by Johann Friedrich Dübner, Leipzig, 1833); Otto Jahn (with the ''

scholia Scholia (singular scholium or scholion, from grc, σχόλιον, "comment, interpretation") are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of t ...

'' and valuable ''prolegomena,'' Leipzig, 1843); John Conington (with translation; 3rd ed., Oxford, 1893), etc.; but there are several modern editions.

Editions

* Braund, Susanna M. (2004) ''Juvenal and Persius''. Loeb Classical Library. Harvard University Press.

Notes

References

* Bartsch, Shadi. ''Persius: A Study in Food, Philosophy, and the Figural.'' (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015). * Hooley, D. M. ''The Knotted Thong: Structures of Mimesis in Persius'' (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997). * Reckford, Kenneth J. ''Recognizing Persius'' (Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009) (Martin Classical Lectures).

External links

* * * * * *
Online Galleries, History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries
High resolution images of works by Persius in .jpg and .tiff format. *
Auli Persii Flacci satirarum liber, cum scholiis antiquis
', Otto Jahn (ed.), Lipsiae, typis et impensis Breitropfii er Baertelii, 1843. *
The Life of Aulus Persius Flaccus
' from

Suetonius Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (), commonly referred to as Suetonius ( ; c. AD 69 – after AD 122), was a Roman historian who wrote during the early Imperial era The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τ� ...

's ''De Viris Illustribus'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Persius Flaccus, Aulus 34 births 62 deaths 1st-century Romans Roman-era poets Roman-era satirists Silver Age Latin writers Etruscans