In the famous trio of Roman verse satirists--Horace, Persius, and Juvenal--Persius is now, but has not always been, the neglected middle child. His libellus (little book) of six satires in hexameter verse, published after his death, only amounts to 650 lines, plus a brief fourteen-line preface in choliambics, or "limping iambics"; yet, it may be said to have revolutionized Roman satire, pointing it away from Horace's geniality, tolerance, and moderation and toward Juvenal's grand rhetorical denunciations of folly and vice. Persius's fierce independence, high moral seriousness, and forceful expression of Stoic values were admired and emulated from late antiquity and the Middle Ages, through the high Renaissance, and well into the eighteenth century. What have been less appreciated are his wild Aristophanic humor, his dramatic verve, and the sheer audacity of his poetic style, which has often been criticized for its seemingly willful obscurity, but which, for lovers of poetry, still remains exciting indeed.
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