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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
Twenty five years ago in the infant Ramus, J.P. Sullivan wrote ‘In Defence of Persius’. Not many scholars writing today would think of choosing that title: having contemplated the indefensible aspects of Classical literature, most are far too wary to leap to the defence of any classical author, let alone a writer of Satire, a genre distinguished by its combination of crassness and cruelty, its insistence on turning its audience into victimisers. Sullivan's defence rests partly on his perceptive appreciation of Persius' unusually complex and intense poetic style. Twenty years later, also in Ramus, John Henderson took a different approach to the same author: his (ironical?) strategy was not to defend the poet, but to banish him and his style entirely:
Persius then: not the minor figure caught in Latin Literature's toils, Silver Immaturity, that obscure, difficult poetaster and also-ran satirist. Rather, a central and key textual trace of the cultural formation of imperial subjectivity.… Away, then, Persius, from the margins of literariness and into the centre of Roman imperial cultural formation…
The formulation of the object of study as a textual trace—no longer an obscure poet, but a central and key textual trace—transforms the reading of an unpopular minor Latin author (surely a self-indulgent exercise, after all; not the sort of thing our educational system ought to be funding) into an exemplary study of the cultural formation of imperial subjectivity. Persius would have enjoyed sharing this secret with his ditch.
The text of Persius’ Satires used in this article is ClausenW.V. ed., A. Persi Flacci el D. Iuni Iuuenalis Saturae (Oxford1959). Commentaries: ConingtonJ. ed. and comm., The Satires of A. Persius Flaccus (Oxford1893); HarveyR.A., A Commentary on Persius (Leiden1981); JahnO. ed., A. Persii Flacci D. Iunii luvenalis Sulpiciae Saturae (Berlin1893). Frequently cited works: GowersE., The Loaded Table: Representations of Food in Roman Literature (Oxford1993); HendersonJ., ‘Out of Circulation? An Essay on Exchange in Persius' Satires1’, Ramus20 (1991), 123–48; RuddN., Themes in Roman Satire (London1986). A sampler of scholarship on Persius: AndersonW.S., ‘Persius and the Rejection of Society’, in Essays on Roman Satire (Princeton1982), 169–93; BrambleJ., Persius and the Programmatic Satire (Cambridge1974); GowersE., ‘Persius and the Decoction of Nero’, in ElsnerJ. and MastersJ. (edd.), Reflections of Nero: Culture, History and Representation (Chapel Hill1994), 131–50; KnocheU., Roman Satire, tr. RamageE.S. (Bloomington and London1975); MorfordM., Persius (Boston1984) NisbetR.G.M, ‘Persius’, in SullivanJ.P. (ed.), Satire (Bloomington and London), 39–72; RelihanJ., ‘Out of Circulation? An Essay on Exchange in Persius' Satires1’, ICS14 (1989), 145–67; ParatoreE., Biografia e Poetica di Persio (Florence1968).
2. J.P. Sullivan, , ‘In Defence of Persius’, Ramus 1 (1971), 48–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3. Henderson (n.l above), 124.
4. The indispensable Gowers Loaded Table (n.l above), 142; Gowers ‘Persius and Decoction’ (n. 1 above) for a more extended discussion of the ‘decocted’ nature of life and letters under Nero.
5. Anderson (n.l above), passim.
6. Quint. 10.1.95; see Gowers Loaded Table (n.l above), 124.
7. Cairns, F., Generic Composition in Greek and Latin Poetry (Edinburgh 1983), 136.Google Scholar
8. Cairns, F., ‘Propertius 3.10 and Roman Birthdays’, Hermes 99 (1971), 153 n.2.Google Scholar For more on Roman birthdays, see Argetsinger, K., ‘Birthday Rituals: Friends and Patrons in Roman Poetry and Cult’, CA 11(1992), 174–94.Google Scholar
9. Cairns (n.7 above), 136. For another example of the inverted genethliakon, see Statius’ Siluae 2.7.
10. Malamud, M., ‘Happy Birthday, Dead Lucan: (P)raising the Dead in Siluae 2.7’, in A.J. Boyle (ed.), Roman Literature and Ideology: Ramus Essays for J.P. Sullivan (Bendigo 1995), 169–98.Google Scholar
11. See Conington ad Saf. 1.16 for the scholiast’s speculation on the two possible meanings of the birthday ring (either a ring worn on the wearer’s birthday, or a present given on the wearer’s birthday). Conington quotes Casaubon, utro modo accipias pili non interest unius. Macrinus marks the day on his calendar with chalk or with a white stone (cf. Martial 9.52.5, diesque nobis/signandi melioribus lapillis, and Harvey and Conington ad 2.2 for more parallels); the reciter marks the occasion of his birthday by wearing his sardonyx.
12. Ovid Tristia 5.5 combines the demand for propitious speech and the adoption of white garb: lingua fauens adsit, nostrorum oblita malorum, quae, puto, dedidicit iam bona uerba loqui; quaeque semel toto uestis mihi sumitur anno sumatur fatis discolor alba meis. (Tristia 5.5.5–8) Other examples of the demand for silence or favourable speech: Propertius 3.10.7–10; Tibullus 2.2.1; Ovid Tristia 5.5.6; Statius Siluae 2.7. See Cairns (n.8 above, 152) for the topos; Malamud (n.10 above, 170–75) for Statius’ use of it.
13. Henderson (n.l above), 132; Relihan (n.l above), 433f.; Bramble (n.l above), 146.
14. Rudd (n.l above), 103: ‘Could it be that the frame for the whole satire was provided by two lines of Ovid?… I make the suggestion with considerable diffidence; but Persius’ mind worked in strange ways…’
15. Verse and the establishment of empire is expressed by mythological exempla: sic uictor laudem superatis Liber ab Indis/ Alcides capta traxit ab Oechalia, 4.8.61f.
16. Newlands, C., Playing with Time: Ovid and the Fasti (Ithaca 1995), 59Google Scholar; see also Miller, John, ‘The Fasti and Hellenistic Didactic: Ovid’s Variant Aetiologies’, Arethusa 25 (1992), 11–31Google Scholar. Ovid puts a speech that similarly condemns animal sacrifice, though at much greater length, in the mouth of Pythagoras in Met. 15.75–478.
17. A sample of the many words that carry a monetary or financial sense: numera, 2.1; apponit, 2.2; emaci, 2.3; mercede, 2.29; rem, 2.44; fortunare, 2.45; nummus, 2.51; aurum, 2.59.
18. Alloquitur Macrinum sicut hominem eruditum et paterno affectu diligentem, qui in domo Seruili didicerat, a quo agellum comparauerat indulto sibi pretio aliquantulo, Schol. ad 2.1.
19. L., and Brind’amour, P., ‘La deuxième satire de Perse et le dies lustricus’, Latomus 30 (1971), 999–1024Google Scholar; Argetsinger (n.8 above).
20. Perhaps the link between Macrinus and the sickly child is Persius himself, who occupies the position of son (and heir…) in Macrinus’ affections.
21. Revolting sacrifices: Sat. 2.41–51; see Flintoff, E., ‘Food for Thought: Some Imagery in Persius Satire 2’, Hermes 110 (1982), 341–54Google Scholar, and Gowers Loaded Table (n.l above), 182: Rome ‘becomes an abattoir: wading through dripping lard, chitterlings, lights and tripe, Persius exposes man’s own scelerata pulpa, spoiled flesh…’
22. Henderson (n.l above), 133: ‘Mental sanity, anachoresis, past all the manias: but how?’
23. Gowers Loaded Table (n.l above), 184f.
24. Lanx satura: Diomedes, Grammatici Latini (Keil), 1.485. For compositum, ius, incoctum, see Gowers (ibid.) and Flintoff (n.21 above). Flintoff sees the final lines as a moving example of Persius’ spiritual optimism.
25. Grain, in fact, was particularly linked to the celebration of birthdays in the form of porridge: see Gowers Loaded Table (n.l above), 55f. She later (83f.) cites Pliny NH 18.19 on Roman birthday celebrations that feature porridge (puis) and suggests an etymological link between Maccius Plautus, the stewed cereal maccum, and the verb macerare. Could we add Macrinus to the list here?
26. See Gowers Loaded Table (n.l above), 133 and esp. n.94, for further citations.
27. The scholiast takes semipaganus to mean ‘half-rustic’. Zietsman, J.C., ‘Persius and the Votes Concept’, Akroterion 33 (1988), 74Google Scholar, says ‘he is semipaganus (“half-initiated”) because he cannot fully participate in the poets’ mysteries as he does not share the divine inspiration of the epic and lyric writers…’ Harvey, along with Conington and Jahn, connect the metaphor to the Paganalia, translating it as ‘a half-member of the pagus’.
28. Henderson (n.2 above), 146 n.102, who cites Korzeniewski, D., ‘Die erste Satire des Persius’, in Korzeniewski, D. (ed), Die Römische Satire (Darmstadt 1970), 404 n.9Google Scholar, associating Bassus with the puer senex in philosophical education: ‘the satirist’s hero is this, but at the same time he is a cradle-snatching old lecher and an old fool (even if he is a good old fool).’
29. Henderson (n.l above), 131.
30. Henderson (n.l above), 135.
31. Gowers, E., ‘Horace, Satires 1.5: An Inconsequential Journey’, PCPS 39 (1993), 50–53Google Scholar, on satire, sermo, as digression.
32. Coffey, M., Roman Satire (London and New York 1976), 100.Google Scholar
33. See Leach, E., ‘Horace’s pater optimus and Terence’s Demea: Autobiographical Fiction and Comedy in Sermo 1.4’, AJP 92 (1971), 616–32Google Scholar, and W. Anderson, ‘Autobiography and Art in Horace’, in Essays (n.l above), 50–74.
34. Hor. Sat. 3.25
35. Vita Persi 7f.
36. Conington ad 3.47 benignly attributes the father’s sweat to ‘pleasure and excitement’; Harvey, less sanguine, imagines a disastrous scenario (ad 3.47): ‘The father perspired less from “pleasure and excitement”…than from trepidation that the boy might make a mess of his speech, so disgracing his parent before the friends he had invited.’ Certainly Persius, master of the satiric stew, did make a ‘mess’ out of speech later in life. The phrase adductis amicis (Sat. 3.47) brings to mind as well the seductis diuis of Sat. 2.4. Later in Sat. 6, the father’s words of advice to his son and heir are purely financial, and the son does not want to recall them (Sat. 6.65–68, taking Conington’s reading of dicta repone paterna rather than the one adopted by Clausen; see Conington ad 6.67 and Harvey ad 6.66–68, with further references to the textual problem).
37. Hor. Sat. 5.30; cf. Gowers (n.30 above), 60f., for further references to blindness, lameness, and other ‘truncations and curtailments’.
38. See below, for a fuller discussion of the first part of the preface.
39. For the frying pan, cf. Sat.1.80, sartago loquendi, discussed by Bramble (n.l above), 122, and Gowers Loaded Table (n.l above), 186.
40. Cf. Hor. Sat. 1.1, where the man content with life leaves it like a contented dinner guest, uti conuiua satur, adapted from Lucretius 3.938.
41. And the reader, whoever he or she may be: cf. Sat. 1.2, quis leget haec?
42. Lucretius (2.79) uses the metaphor of the torch to represent the handing on of life; he also describes Epicurus carrying his shining torch (lumen) to the edges of the universe, which would extend the metaphor from one of life to one of poetic inspiration. Varro (R.R. 3.16.9) uses the same metaphor for passing on the task of discourse. The reference to Mercury, the god who conducts souls into and out of the underworld, in the following line strengthens the association between Manius and the dead, as well as underscoring the financial aspects of inheritance.
43. For the prologue, see Witke, C., ‘The Function of Persius’ Choliambics’, Mnemosyne 15 (1962), 151–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar; for the topos of divine inspiration, see Miller, J.F., ‘Disclaiming Divine Inspiration: A Programmatic Pattern’, WS 99 (1986), 151–64Google Scholar. The twin topoi of the fons of poetry and the poet’s initiation on Helicon are widespread. Harvey cites Prop. 3.1.6, 3.3.5f. and Ovid Am. 3.9.25f. as sources for the spring topos; and Hes. Theog. 22–34, Ovid A.A. 1.27f., Callim. Aet. 1 frg. 2, Ennius Ann. 5f. (V.2); Vergil Eel. 6.64–73, Prop. 3.3, for the poet on Helicon, or dreaming he is on Helicon.
44. Hardie, P., The Epic Successors of Virgil: A Study in the Dynamics of a Tradition (Cambridge 1993), 103.Google Scholar
45. Hardie (n.44 above), 102–05.
46. The scholiast to Persius 6.10 takes Ennius as the fifth in descent from Homer: Homer-Euphorbus-peacock-Pythagoras-Ennius.
47. Sed tacent pennae, sed displicet uox, et poetae nihil aliud quam cantare malunt. damnatus est igitur Homerus in pauum, non honoratus: Tert. de an. 33.8, quoted in Skutsch, O. (ed. and comm.), The Annals of Q. Ennius (Oxford 1985), 152Google Scholar. See ibid. 164f. for a discussion of the peacock, and 147ff. for a discussion of the evidence for the dream and the ancient testimonia.
48. Semigraecus: Suetonius de grammaticis 1.2. Three hearts: Aulus Gellius Nodes Atticae 17.17.1. Two graves: Knoche (n.l above), 19.
49. O si/ sub rastro crepet argenti mini seria dextro/ Hercule, Sat. 2.10–12—immediately followed by a prayer for the death of a ward and potential heir.
