CHAPTER III.
BIOGRAPHY OF PERSIUS—HIS SCHOOLBOY DAYS—HIS FRIENDS—HIS PURITY AND MODESTY—HIS DEFECTS AS A SATIRIST—SUBJECTS OF HIS SATIRES—OBSCURITY OF HIS STYLE—COMPARED WITH HORACE—BIOGRAPHY OF JUVENAL—CORRUPTION OF ROMAN MORALS—CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS OF THE SATIRES—THEIR HISTORICAL VALUE—STYLE OF JUVENAL—HE WAS THE LAST OF ROMAN SATIRISTS.
Aulus Persius Flaccus (BORN A. D. 34.)
Roman satire subsequently to Horace is represented by Aulus Persius Flaccus and Decimus Junius Juvenalis. Persius was a member of an equestrian family, and was born, according to the Eusebian Chronicle, A. D. 34, at Volaterræ in Etruria. He was related to the best families in Italy, and numbered amongst his kindred Arria, the noble-minded wife of Pætus. His father died when he was six years old, and his mother, Fulvia Sisenna, married a second time a Roman knight named Fusius. In a few years she was again a widow. Persius received his elementary education at his native town; but at twelve years of age he was brought to Rome, and went through the usual course of grammar and rhetoric, under Remmius Palæmon[[1049]] and Virginius Flavus.[[1050]] The former of these was, like so many men of letters, a freedman, and the son of a slave. He was, according to Suetonius,[[1051]] a man of profligate morals, but gifted with great fluency of speech, and a prodigious memory. He was rather a versifier than a poet, and, like so many modern Italians, possessed the talent of improvising. He was prosperous as a schoolmaster, considering the very small pittance which the members of that profession usually earned, for his school brought him in forty sestertia per annum (about 325l.[[1052]]) Virginius Flavus is only known as the author of a treatise on Rhetoric.
Persius himself gives[[1053]] an amusing picture of his schoolboy idleness, his love of play, and his tricks to escape the hated declamation which, in Roman schools, formed a weekly exercise:[[1054]]—
Sæpe oculos, memini, tangebam parvus olivo,
Grandia si nollem morituri verba Catonis
Discere non sano multum laudanda magistro,
Quæ pater adductis sudans audiret amicis.
Jure; etenim id summum, quid dexter senio ferret,
Scire erat in voto; damnosa canicula quantum