of Nero: the fifth satire is employed in evincing
that the wise man also is free; in discussing which
point, the author adopts the observations used by Horace
on the same subject. The last satire of Persius
is directed against avarice. In the fifth, we
meet with a beautiful address to Cornutus, whom the
author celebrates for his amiable virtues, and peculiar
talents for teaching. The following lines, at
the same time that they show how diligently the preceptor
and his pupil were employed through the whole day in
the cultivation of moral science, afford a more agreeable
picture of domestic comfort and philosophical conviviality,
than might be expected in the family of a rigid stoic:
Tecum etenim longos memini
consumere soles,
Et tecum primas epulis decerpere
noctes.
Unum opus, et requiem pariter
disponimus ambo:
Atque verecunda laxamus feria
mensa.—Sat. v.
Can I forget how many a summer’s
day,
Spent in your converse, stole,
unmarked, away?
Or how, while listening with
increased delight,
I snatched from feasts the
earlier hours of night?—Gifford.
The satires of Persius are written in a free, expostulatory,
and argumentative manner; possessing the same justness
of sentiment as those of Horace, but exerted in the
way of derision, and not with the admirable raillery
of that facetious author. They are regarded by
many as obscure; but this imputation arises more from
unacquaintance with the characters and manners to
which the author alludes, than from any peculiarity
either in his language or composition. His versification
is harmonious; and we have only to remark, in addition
to similar examples in other Latin writers, that,
though Persius is acknowledged to have been both virtuous
and modest, there are in the fourth satire a few passages
which cannot decently admit of being translated.
Such was the freedom of the Romans, in the use of
some expressions, which just refinement has now exploded.—
Another poet, in this period, was FABRICIUS VEIENTO,
who wrote a severe satire against the priests of his
time; as also one (399) against the senators, for
corruption in their judicial capacity. Nothing
remains of either of those productions; but, for the
latter, the author was banished by Nero.
There now likewise flourished a lyric poet, Caesius
Bassus, to whom Persius has addressed his sixth
satire. He is said to have been, next to Horace,
the best lyric poet among the Romans; but of his various
compositions, only a few inconsiderable fragments are
preserved.
To the two poets now mentioned must be added Pomponius
Secundus, a man of distinguished rank in the
army, and who obtained the honour of a triumph for
a victory over a tribe of barbarians in Germany.
He wrote several tragedies, which in the judgment
of Quintilian, were beautiful compositions.
