Scit risisse vafer: clearly ironic. The buffoon thinks it clever to know how to have laughed at the mathematician.
Nonaria: this word is a hapax legomenon, i.e. a word that only appears once in ancient literature. Its meaning is thus obscure. The scholiast, however, glosses it: “nonaria is a name for a meretrix, because among our elders they were not allowed to ply their trade before the ninth hour (nona hora), lest the young men miss their military training in the morning.” The vulgar man laughs when the nonaria plucks the beard of the Cynic philosopher.
His = “for these sorts of men.”
Edictum = “praetor’s edict,” daily posting of legal notices.
Callirhoen: the reference again is much debated. Some take this as the title of a mythological poem on a heroine of the same name, such as those lampooned at the satire’s opening. Others see it as the name of courtesan. It’s not clear that for Persius there is much difference.
Do: note the abrupt ending.
3
The scholiast tells us that this is a poem based on a satire from Lucilius’s fourth book. A young student with a hangover is urged by his comes to live by Stoic virtue. As Housman (1913) recognized at the beginning of the twentieth century, there is more than a passing resemblance between the student and Persius. But who, then, is the comes who voices Stoic sentiments not much different from Persius’s own? And how are we to understand the voice of the narrator who cannot be fully equated with either of the other two, but at times seems to identify with the student, through the use of the first person plural (lines 3 and 12)? Different commentators have proposed different solutions. Some see all the voices as Persius’s and ask us to picture a complex internal monologue. Others seek to assign one to Persius and the others to other dramatic characters and narratological functions (Dessen 1968: 48–9; Harvey 1981: 78; Lee and Barr 1987: 100–1; Kissel 1990: 367–73).
On one level, the problem is insoluble: for fundamentally all the voices are those of the satirist; and yet he asks us to picture a dialogue. That dialogue, however, has no clearly demarcated speakers. As Hooley has recognized (1997), the poem owes an extensive debt to Horace 2.3. In that poem, Horace is the object of a diatribe by the Stoic Damasippus. Damasippus is portrayed as a wild-eyed fanatic, but not a few of his darts hit home before Horace chases him from the stage. Nonetheless, where Horace’s poem has no narrator but proceeds solely through dialogue, and where Damasippus and Horace are always clearly distinguished, Persius 3 presents a deliberate muddle. Indeed, the commentators and editors vary not only in how they identify the voices that inhabit the poem, but also with regard to which voices they assign which lines. One must therefore conclude either that Persius was an incompetent poet whose mess only an ingenious commentator could untangle or that the confusion of voices serves a larger purpose.
The real question is how do these formal and intertextual complexities advance the poem’s main argument? The key issue with regard to content is: to what extent has the student actually internalized the Stoic precepts to which he has been exposed (lines 25–62)? The answer would appear to be “very little.” The poem ends with the interlocutor’s claim that he is not sick. The philosophical comes replies that the latter (presumably the student of the poem’s beginning) “says and does what even insane Orestes would have recognized as mad” (lines 117–18). In short, the patient does not recognize his own illness. At the same time, the poem presents us with an intertextual labyrinth in which extensive borrowings from Horace are matched by what the scholiast claims are equally important borrowings from Lucilius (the exact contents of which are lost to us). The question on the formal level is then: to what extent has Persius made these borrowings his own? In short, the poem’s relation to its generic predecessors recapitulates the basic philosophical problem its central argument poses. Moreover, the confusion over to whom the various voices of the poem are to be attributed is itself a perfect embodiment of the very problematic process of internalizing Stoic precepts or poetic models and making them one’s own. At what point does shallow, rote imitation become an authentic creative act whether of an ethical or an aesthetic nature? When does the truth become our own as opposed to a superficial appurtenance? At the deepest level, what does it mean to have a voice of one’s own, to fashion a self, and hence finally to awake from our drunken slumber? These are the questions that Persius’s radical satire makes us pose.
1–2. The narrative voice sets the scene. It is morning and the sun is fully risen (clarum mane). Nempe haec adsidue: The satire presents a typical, not a unique, scene.
Rimas < rima, –ae: “cracks, fissures.” The windows are shuttered.
3–4. The shift to the first person plural introduces the confusion of voices discussed in the introductory note. Quod refers to the time expression in quinta dum linea tangitur umbra, an image taken from the sundial. The dissolute youth has slept long enough to “skim off”—i.e., “sober up from”— (despumare) the strong Falernian wine. Stertimus < sterto, –ere: “to snore.”
5–6. The comes speaks. “Do you sleep while midsummer scorches the flocks and fields?” Insana canicula: the rising of the dog star, Canis Maior, in late July begins the dog-days of summer. It is a period of proverbial ill health when those who can leave Rome for cooler climes.
Patula < patulus, –a, –um: “spreading.”
7–8. The student wakes with a start and calls for a servant (aliquis), but receives no response. Itan and nemon = itane and nemone.
8–9. Our pupil’s frustration shows him to be anything but a model of Stoic self-possession. Bilis: bile was considered an index of anger in ancient medicine.
Rudere = “bray.” Arcadia was known for its donkeys.
10–11. Writing materials are brought so the day’s work can begin. Membrana = “parchment,” in this case referring to a portfolio made of treated sheepskin (hence positis … capillis) used to hold loose rough drafts (chartae). Though such parchments were smoothed with pumice, they were never the same shade on both sides (bicolor) and were on occasion dyed. The liber is the text our student is to study. He is either preparing a commentary for personal use or a hypomnemata, a notebook of quotations used for recollection and meditation.
Harundo = “a reed,” used as a pen.
12–14. “Even with all these preparations, we are still not able to settle down to the task at hand. There is always an excuse.” Calamo = the harundo above. Umor = ink.
Sepia = “cuttle fish” and hence its “ink.”
Fistula = another term for “pen.”
15–16. We switch back from the narrator to the comes, but the continued use of the first person plural deliberately clouds the issue of who is speaking to whom and to what extent these represent separate voices. O miser inque dies ultra miser = mock epic grief. The student has lost all sense of proportion.
16–18. “Why don’t you like a spoiled pet or child demand tender food and a lullaby, then refuse them from the nurse?” This is a difficult passage filled with subliterary words. The gist, however, is clear: our young charge is acting like a brat, calling for his pen and paper, then refusing to use them. Columbo = “dove,” which the scholiast tells us was a common pet name for children. Think “sweetie pie.”
Pappare = infinitive used as a substantive: “to eat liquid or mashed food,” from the word babies used to call for their food pap[p]a; the phonetic similarity with papilla, “nipple,” should be observed. Minutum, “chopped into tiny pieces,” modifies the infinitive.
Lallare = another substantive from the habit of nurses singing “lalla, lalla” to soothe an infant that will not go to sleep.
Mammae = “breast” and hence by metonymy “nurse,” but the literal meaning is still functional: our charge acts as if he is barely weaned from the teat.
19–118. After a weak retort from the student, the comes launches into a lengthy diatribe that in the opinion of some editors continues till the end of the satire. Others see external voices interrupting. These cruxes (lines 44�
�51, 76–118) will be discussed as they occur.
19–20. “Who are you trying to fool?” Cui verba: understand das.
Succinis < succino, –ere: “a low continuous accompaniment or whine.”
Ambages = “evasions.”
Tibi luditur: “you’ve placed your bets.” See Juvenal 1.90.
20–2. “You are only making a fool of yourself; stop it. The ill-fired pot doesn’t ring true.” Contemnere = second person future passive, “you will be held in contempt.”
Fidelia = “an earthenware pot,” but observe the pun on fides.
23–4. “You are nothing but unformed wet mud. Hurry off to the potter’s wheel.” Note the metaphor of the achieved Stoic self as an artifact or product of craft [31]. The authentic self is not a given to be discovered, but the product of artisanal, if not artistic, endeavor. Sine fine: the labor of self-fashioning is endless.
24–9. The comes anticipates the student’s response: he cannot be characterized as vitiosus because he is of aristocratic heritage and possessed of Etruscan estates. Persius here pursues Horace’s program in 1.4 of redefining traditional aristocratic virtues and republican libertas for an imperial age [25–6, 30–1]. In the case of Persius, however, the old verities are not simply in need of re-fashioning but have become a shoddy dodge.
Far modicum = “modest spelt,” metonymy for a decent yearly grain harvest from the student’s ancestral estates. The claim is simultaneously one of modesty and élite status. “I do not want too much and I have more than enough, thank you very much.” Spelt and the ancestral salt cellar (salinium) are images of simplicity and old Roman frugalitas, as the scholiast notes, even as they are also here claims to landed estates and distinguished lineage. See Horace 1.6.110–18 and Odes 2.16.13–14. The student thinks he has all his bases covered, but he confuses the outward signs of virtue with their inner reality.
Patella = a small plate used for making offerings to the Lar familiaris, the guardian of the hearth. Understand est.
Hoc satis?: the referent for hoc is ambiguous. If it refers to the student’s ancestral estate, then it asks if he is content with his lot or does he long for more. If it refers to the statement, then it asks if this will be the only objection the student will make.
Stemmate quod Tusco ramum = the image of a family tree tracing the student’s roots back to the Etruscan nobility. It is perhaps no coincidence that Persius himself is of Etruscan descent. Stemma refers to a “garland” hung around an ancestral image and hence to a group of those images formed into a genealogical chart. Each branch of the family tree was a ramus or virga.
Millesime = vocative: “a thousand times removed.”
29. This line has been vexed by several difficulties, none of which has been solved to the satisfaction of most commentators. First, there is the seemingly redundant, –ve … vel. It has been suggested that they refer to two separate alternatives, “you are puffed with pride either because you greet your censor or because you wear the trabea.” Syntactically, this makes good sense, but both alternatives refer to the same institution: the annual transvectio in which the knights paraded before the censor wearing the short trabea instead of the more usual tunic. Some solve this problem of seeming tautology by referring to the adjective tuum and deducing that the alternative is: either you are proud because you are a knight or because your (tuum) relative is the censor. But this is hardly credible since at this period the emperor held the office of censor. The advocates of this interpretation are then forced to make the subsidiary assumption that Persius is referring to municipal knights in a provincial city not the capital. In that case, the hypothesis that the student will respond to the charges of the comes by invoking his stemma would lose much of its point. Moreover, we have no evidence that the transvectio took place outside of Rome (Harvey 1981). Nor does tuum necessarily imply any closer relationship than that of the censor to the knights under his review. The textual tradition provides little help. Casaubon (1605) conjectured censoremne for censoremve and Clausen (1956) claims to have found it in nonnulli libri, but there is no manuscript support for this reading, though many find it tempting. There is some manuscript support for censoremque, but what this would mean is far from clear. Kissel’s argument that, –que here functions as an intensifier rather than a conjunction is unconvincing (1990). I have, therefore, marked the text with daggers, though its gist seems clear.
30. “You’re not fooling anyone!” Phaleras < phalerae, –arum: “brass ornaments worn by the horses of the equites.” Again there is a double meaning. On the one hand, the poet continues the image of the transvectio. On the other, he dismisses these insignia as baubles, mere ornaments, for the people (ad populum). The comes knows the student intus and out (in cute). He looks for a nobilitas that springs from deeper sources.
31. Discincti … Nattae: Natta is not known. A person by the same name is mentioned at Horace 1.6.124 as a miser of unclean hygienic practices. See Seneca’s description of Maecenas in Epistles 114.4–6, where he says that the great man’s loose attire betrayed his effeminacy.
32–4. “But he does not know better and drowns deep in his own ignorance.”
Fibris increvit opimum / pingue = “he has piled rich fat round his heart,” a complex image. Natta through his very acquisitiveness has coarsened his heart and rendered himself even more insensitive to his own depravity. On fibris: see 1.47.
Bullit < bullio, –ire: “to bubble up.”
35–8. “Father of the gods, may you offer no greater punishment for even the worst tyrants than to see virtue and turn away from it.” Velis = hortatory subjunctive.
Intabescant = “may they melt [in tears].”
39–43. “Or does the bull of Phalaris and the sword of Damocles strike more terror in the heart than the knowledge that one is plunging into vice?” Phalaris was tyrant of Agrigentum in the sixth century BCE. Perillus was said to have constructed for him an ingeniously crafted bronze bull such that when his enemies were roasted alive in it the bull bellowed with their screams. Perillus was the first victim.
Dionysus II of Syracuse (fourth century BCE) forced the courtier Damocles to sit under a sword suspended by a single hair after the latter had suggested that the life of a tyrant was carefree. Auratis … laquearibus: gilded ceilings are a regular symbol of luxury and excess.
Purpureas … cervices: purple was the color of monarchs.
Quod = “dependent on the notion of fear contained in palleat” (Gilder-sleeve 1903).
44–51. “I too used to dodge my studies as well, but I was just a boy.” Most editions give these lines to the comes, but some (e.g., Jenkinson 1980; Dominick and Wehrle 1999) divide them between the student and the comes. The question is wholly interpretive. Those who give lines 44–7 to the student, see a dawning recognition of his own flawed nature as he recalls his deeply ingrained bad habits. The rest understand these lines as a rhetorical ploy on the part of the comes whereby he first identifies with his charge and then demonstrates how he has grown beyond such slovenliness. The question of which reading is correct may be the wrong one since the distinction between externalized recollection and internalized virtue is precisely what is at stake in this satire’s sustained confusion of voices (Hooley 1997: chapter 5). In that case, the exemplum of a student forced to memorize a speech by the Stoic hero, Cato Uticensis, is particularly apt. Cato, after the defeat of the republican cause at the battle of Thapsus (46 BCE) committed suicide. The younger Seneca at Epistles 24.6–7 preserves his last words, known as ad contemnendam mortem. He notes that the declamation of this short speech was a common exercise in schools.
Olivo: oil was a common ingredient in ointments for the eye. The comes was not truly ill, but trying to avoid having to declaim Cato’s speech in a display staged by his teacher for his father and his father’s friends.
Non sano: presumably because the magister would praise such a ridiculous exercise, or perhaps he was ill from having to listen to it.
Sudans: the father is overcome
with nerves.
48–51. “At that time I prayed for nothing but luck at dicing and tops.” Dexter senio: three sixes was the best throw in tesserae. The worst throw, three ones, was the canicula.
Angustae collo non fallier orcae: the reference is to a game played by trying to throw small objects like nuts into the narrow neck of a jar (orcae). Fallier = archaic form of falleri, used in parallel with scire.
Buxum = “a top,” made of box wood.
52–7. “But you are now no child unschooled in the ways of the porch.” Haut tibi inexpertum = “it is not an unheard-of thing to you.”
Curvos = “twisted.”
Sapiens … inlita … porticus: Zeno, the founder of Stoicism, used to teach at the Stoa Poikile (“Painted Porch”) in Athens. It was adorned with a fresco depicting the defeat of the “trousered Persians” (bracatis … Medis) at the battle of Marathon. Inlita < inlino, –ere, –levi, –litum: “to daub, smear,” and hence “paint.”
Quibus is neuter and refers back to quaeque.
Detonsa: Roman Stoics traditionally wore their hair cropped close as a sign of their virtus.
Pasta < pasco, –ere, pavi, pastum: “to feed on” + the ablative. The simple hearty diet was a sign of virtue. Compare the diet of the country mouse in Horace 2.6. Siliquis < siliqua, –ae: a traditional porridge of beans, peas, and lentils. Polenta was an analogous Greek porridge made from barley. It is the ancient ancestor of the modern Italian specialty made from ground corn. Grandi is ironic.
56–7. “The Greek letter γ or, more precisely, an earlier form of it is meant Or. 1.3.7 explains how Pythagoras used it as a symbol for the choice between the good life and the bad that confronts the young. The earliest years of life are represented by the shank, the easy path of vice by the gently inclining left arm, the difficult path of virtue by the steep right arm” (Lee and Barr 1987). Samios: Pythagoras was from Samos.
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