[308]. § 118. Ed. cit., p. 71.
[309]. Refugiendum est ab omni verborum ut ita dicam vilitate, et sumendæ voces a plebe summotæ.
[310]. Præcipitandus est liber spiritus. A characteristic Petronian phrase which will serve (and has in part been used) as text for very different sermons. Part of what follows is no doubt intentionally obscure. The ambages deorumque ministeria refer, of course, to the stock revolutions and interventions of Epic as of Tragedy. But fabulosum sententiarum tormentum is not such plain sailing. I think it means (with an intentional side-glance at the fabled torments which the heroes of Epic see in Hades) the process of racking the brain for story-ornament and sententious conceit of phrase.
[311]. Works, 3 vols., ed. Haase, Leipsic, 1886-87. This does not contain the Tragedies, as to which, however, I have never wished to go beyond a nearly forty years’ possession, the pretty little “Regent’s Classics” edition of 1823. But I have never, as a critic, been able to believe that Seneca wrote them.
[312]. Ed. cit., i. 209. If Seneca be suspected of possible insincerity, Marcus Aurelius cannot be. Yet the estimable Emperor, who had earlier (i. 7), in the true Pharisaic spirit, congratulated himself on abstaining from “rhetoric and poetry,” concludes his reference to the drama (xi. 6) (a reference interesting as including one of the explanations of κάθαρσις), by asking, “To what end does the whole plan of poetry and drama look?” As for Epictetus, v. supra, p. [62].
[313]. Ed. cit., iii. 246 sq.
[314]. In two cases at least. And Quintilian might have known Persius, as he was in Rome before 59 A.D., while Persius did not die till 62.
[315]. Not a few other phrases, such as—
“Cum carmina lumbum
Intrant, et tremulo scalpuntur ubi intima versu”—