SATIRE V.
ARGUMENT.
On this Satire, which is the longest and the best of all, Persius may be said to rest his claims to be considered a Philosopher and a Poet. It may be compared with advantage with the Third Satire of the second book of Horace. As the object in that is to defend what is called the Stoical paradox, "that none but the Philosopher is of sound mind,"
"Quem mala stultitia et quemcunque inscitia veri
Cæecum agit, insanum Chrysippi porticus et grex
Autumat:" i., 43-45,
so here, Persius maintains that other dogma of the Stoics, "that none but the Philosopher is truly a free man." Horace argues (in the person of a Stoic) that there can be but one path that leads in the right direction; all others must lead the traveler only farther astray. "Unus utrique error sed variis illudit partibus" (ἐσθλοὶ μὲν γάρ ἁπλῶς, παντοδαπῶς δὲ κακοί. Arist., Eth., II., vi., 4). So Persius argues, whatever are the varied pursuits of different minds, he that is under the influence of some overwhelming passion, can offer no claim to be accounted a free agent. "Mille hominum species, et rerum discolor usus." (52.) In fact, if we substitute "freedom" for "wisdom," the whole argument of the last part of the Satire may be expressed in the two lines of Horace:
"Quisquis
Ambitione malâ aut argenti pallet amore
Quisquis Luxuria tristive Superstitione
Aut alio mentis morbo calet:"
that man can neither be pronounced free or of sound mind.
The Satire consists of two parts; the first serving as a Proëm to the other. It is, in fact, the earnest expression of unbounded affection for his tutor and early friend Annæus Cornutus, from whom he had imbibed those principles of philosophy, which it is the object of the latter part of the Satire to elucidate. After a few lines of ridicule at the hackneyed prologues of the day, he puts into the mouth of Cornutus that just criticism of poetical composition which there is very little doubt Persius had in reality derived from his master; and in answer to this, he takes occasion to profess his sincere and deep-seated love and gratitude toward the preceptor, whose kind care had rescued him from the vicious courses to which a young and ardent temperament was leading him; and whose sound judgment and dexterous management had weaned him from the temptations that assail the young, by making him his own companion in those studies which expanded his intellect while they rectified the obliquity (to use the Stoics' phrase) of his moral character. Such mutual affection, he urges, could only exist between two persons whom something more than mere adventitious circumstances drew together; and he therefore concludes that the same natal star must have presided over the horoscope of both.
He then proceeds to the main subject of the Satire, viz., that all men should aim at attaining that freedom which can only result from that perfect "soundness of mind" which we have shown to be the summum bonum of the Stoics. This real freedom no mere external or adventitious circumstances can bestow. Dama, though freed at his master's behest, if he be the slave of passion, is as much a slave as if he had never felt the prætor's rod. Until he have really cast off, like the snake, the slough of his former vices, and become changed in heart and principles as he is in political standing, he is so far from being really free from bondage that he can not rightly perform even the most trivial act of daily life. True freedom consists in virtue alone; but "Virtus est vitium fugere:" and he who eradicates all other passions, but cherishes still one darling vice, has but changed his master. The dictates of the passions that sway his breast are more imperious than those of the severest task-master. Whether it be avarice, or luxury, or love, or ambition, or superstition, that is the dominant principle, so long as he can not shake himself free from the control of these, he is as much, as real a slave as the drudge that bears his master's strigil to the bath, or the dog that fancies he has burst his bonds while the long fragment of his broken chain still dangles from his neck. The last few lines contain a dignified rebuke of the sneers which such pure sentiments as these would provoke in the coarse minds of some into whose hands these lines might fall; perhaps, too, they may be meant as a gentle reproof of the sly irony in which the Epicurean Horace indulged, while professing to enunciate the Stoic doctrine, that none but the true Philosopher can be said to be of sound mind.