The Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Complete eBook

Persius was remarkable for gentle manners, for a modesty amounting to bashfulness, a handsome form, and an attachment to his mother, sister, and aunt, which was most exemplary.  He was frugal and chaste.  He left his mother and sister twenty thousand sesterces, requesting his mother, in a written codicil, to present to Cornutus, as some say, one hundred sesterces, or as others, twenty pounds of wrought silver [958], besides about seven hundred books, which, indeed, included his whole library.  Cornutus, however, would only take the books, and gave up the legacy to the sisters, whom his brother had constituted his heirs.

He wrote [959] seldom, and not very fast; even the work we possess he left incomplete.  Some verses are wanting at the end of the book [960], but Cornutus thoughtlessly recited it, as if (540) it was finished; and on Caesius Bassus requesting to be allowed to publish it, he delivered it to him for that purpose., In his younger days, Persius had written a play, as well as an Itinerary, with several copies of verses on Thraseas’ father-in-law, and Arria’s [961] mother, who had made away with herself before her husband.  But Cornutus used his whole influence with the mother of Persius to prevail upon her to destroy these compositions.  As soon as his book of Satires was published, all the world began to admire it, and were eager to buy it up.  He died of a disease in the stomach, in the thirtieth year of his age [962].  But no sooner had he left school and his masters, than he set to work with great vehemence to compose satires, from having read the tenth book of Lucilius; and made the beginning of that book his model; presently launching his invectives all around with so little scruple, that he did not spare cotemporary poets and orators, and even lashed Nero himself, who was then the reigning prince.  The verse ran as follows: 

    Auriculas asini Mida rex habet;
    King Midas has an ass’s ears;

but Cornutus altered it thus;

    Auriculas asini quis non hahet? 
    Who has not an ass’s ears?

in order that it might not be supposed that it was meant to apply to Nero.

THE LIFE OF HORACE.

Horatius Flaccus was a native of Venusium [963], his father having been, by his own account [964], a freedman and collector of taxes, but, as it is generally believed, a dealer in salted (541) provisions; for some one with whom Horace had a quarrel, jeered him, by saying; “How often have I seen your father wiping his nose with his fist?” In the battle of Philippi, he served as a military tribune [965], which post he filled at the instance of Marcus Brutus [966], the general; and having obtained a pardon, on the overthrow of his party, he purchased the office of scribe to a quaestor.  Afterwards insinuating himself first, into the good graces of Mecaenas, and then of Augustus, he secured no small share in the regard of both.  And first, how much Mecaenas loved him may be seen by the epigram in which he says: