The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete eBook

At that time the player was in high favour at court, and many of those who fawned upon him were daily raised to posts of honour.  Juvenal therefore incurred the suspicion of having covertly satirized occurrences which were then passing, and, although eighty years old at that time [950], he was immediately removed from the city, being sent into honourable banishment as praefect of a cohort, which was under orders to proceed to a station at the extreme frontier of Egypt [951].  That (538) sort of punishment was selected, as it appeared severe enough for an offence which was venial, and a mere piece of drollery.  However, he died very soon afterwards, worn down by grief, and weary of his life.

THE LIFE OF PERSIUS.

Aulus Persius Flaccus was born the day before the Nones of December [4th Dec.] [952], in the consulship of Fabius Persicus and L.

Vitellius.  He died on the eighth of the calends of December [24th Nov.] [953] in the consulship of Rubrius Marius and Asinius Gallus.  Though born at Volterra, in Etruria, he was a Roman knight, allied both by blood and marriage to persons of the highest rank [954].  He ended his days at an estate he had at the eighth milestone on the Appian Way.  His father, Flaccus, who died when he was barely six years old, left him under the care of guardians, and his mother, Fulvia Silenna, who afterwards married Fusius, a Roman knight, buried him also in a very few years.  Persius Flaccus pursued his studies at Volterra till he was twelve years old, and then continued them at Rome, under Remmius Palaemon, the grammarian, and Verginius Flaccus, the rhetorician.  Arriving at the age of twenty-one, he formed a friendship with Annaeus Cornutus [955], which lasted through life; and from him he learned the rudiments of philosophy.  Among his earliest friends were Caesius Bassus [956], and Calpurnius Statura; the latter of whom died while Persius himself was yet in his youth.  Servilius (539) Numanus [957], he reverenced as a father.  Through Cornutus he was introduced to Annaeus, as well as to Lucan, who was of his own age, and also a disciple of Cornutus.  At that time Cornutus was a tragic writer; he belonged to the sect of the Stoics, and left behind him some philosophical works.  Lucan was so delighted with the writings of Persius Flaccus, that he could scarcely refrain from giving loud tokens of applause while the author was reciting them, and declared that they had the true spirit of poetry.  It was late before Persius made the acquaintance of Seneca, and then he was not much struck with his natural endowments.  At the house of Cornutus he enjoyed the society of two very learned and excellent men, who were then zealously devoting themselves to philosophical enquiries, namely, Claudius Agaternus, a physician from Lacedaemon, and Petronius Aristocrates, of Magnesia, men whom he held in the highest esteem, and with whom he vied in their studies, as they were of his own age, being younger than Cornutus.  During nearly the last ten years of his life he was much beloved by Thraseas, so that he sometimes travelled abroad in his company; and his cousin Arria was married to him.