Chapter 7 AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS

The mantle of the satirist preacher which had fallen from Horace found no worthy claimant for nearly half a century. The successor, and, so far as in him lay, the sincere imitator of Horace, was Aulus Persius Flaccus. His circumstances were as unlike those of his great predecessor as can well be imagined. Horace was the son of a freedman, with no financial or social backing save that which he won by his own genius; Persius was, like Lucilius, of noble equestrian rank, rich, and related by birth to some of the first men of his time.

Horace, while he had every opportunity for learning all that books and the schools could teach him, was, as we have already seen, pre?minently a student of real life, having been taught by his father to study men as they actually were. Persius, on the other hand, saw little of the world except through the medium of books and teachers. When the future satirist was but six years of age, his father died, and he was brought up chiefly in the society of his mother and sister, carefully shielded from contact with the rough and wicked world. At the age of twelve he was taken from his native Volaterr? in Etruria to Rome, where his formal education was continued in the same careful seclusion until he assumed the toga of manhood. His writings do not, therefore, smack of the street and the world of men as do those of Horace, but they savor of the cloister and the library. Horace preached against the sins of men as he saw them; Persius, as he imagined them and read of them, taking his texts often from the more virile satires of Horace himself. Horace was devoted to no school of philosophy, but accepted what seemed to him best and sanest from all schools, and jeered alike at the follies of all. But Persius was by birth, education, and choice a Stoic. He became an ardent preacher and expounder of the Stoic philosophy, just as Lucretius had thrown his whole heart into expounding the doctrine of Epicurus a hundred years before.

Stoicism, as Tyrrell says, was the "philosophy in which under the Roman Empire the human conscience sought and found an asylum. It had ceased now to be a philosophy, and had become a religion, appealing to the rich and great as Christianity appealed to the poor and humble."

Persius, accordingly, following his early bent, as soon as he arrived at man's estate, placed himself under the care and instruction of Cornutus, a Stoic philosopher. His own account of this event forms one of the most pleasing passages in his works, and is found in the fifth satire, which is a confession of his own ardent devotion both to his friend the Stoic, and to Stoicism as well.

The lofty and almost Christian tone of this ardent young Stoic preacher was greatly admired in the Middle Ages, and he was much quoted by the Church Fathers. His high moral truths sounded out in an age of moral laxity, when faith in the old religious beliefs had given way, and had not yet laid hold upon the nascent doctrine of Christianity which was even now marching westward and was soon to gain admission to Rome itself. To the Stoic, virtue was the bright goal of all living. To gain her was to gain life indeed; and to lose her was to suffer loss irreparable. This loss the poet invokes in a masterly apostrophe in the third satire upon those rulers who basely abuse their power.

Dread sire of gods! when lust's envenomed stings

Stir the fierce nature of tyrannic kings;

When storms of rage within their bosoms roll,

And call in thunder for thy just control;

O then relax the bolt, suspend the blow,

And thus and thus alone thy vengeance show:

In all her charms set Virtue in their eye,

And let them see their loss, despair, and die!

Gifford.

The Christian tone of Persius is perhaps best seen in the second satire, which is a sermon on prayer. The tone throughout is far above the level of the thinking of his time, and shows a lofty conception of the deity and of spiritual things. In the closing lines especially, he reaches so high and true a spiritual note that he seems almost to have caught a glimpse of those high conceptions which inspired his great contemporary, the apostle Paul. This sermon might well have had for its text the inspired words of the Old Testament prophet Hosea: "For I desired mercy and not sacrifice; and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings."

That the Romans were not without their own light as to the acceptable offering to heaven is further seen in an ode of Horace, in which he voices the same high truth, that the thought of the heart is of more moment in the sight of God than the offering of the hand. This fine ode ends with the following stanza:

If thy hand, free from ill, the altar touch,

Thou shalt the offended gods appease as much

With gifts of sparkling salt and pious meal

As if thy vows more costly victims seal.

Hawkins.

But let us now return to our poet's sermon on prayer. Persius addresses it to his friend Plotius Macrinus, congratulating him upon the returning anniversary of his birthday.

Health to my friend! and while my vows I pay,

O mark, Macrinus, this auspicious day,

Which, to your sum of years already flown,

Adds yet another-with a whiter stone.

Amid the prayers to his tutelary genius this day, Macrinus will not offer those selfish and impious prayers with which men are too prone to come before the gods, prayers which they would not dare to utter to a man, or even in the hearing of men.

Indulge your genius, drench in wine your cares:

It is not yours, with mercenary prayers,

To ask of heaven what you would die with shame,

Unless you drew the gods aside, to name;

While other great ones stand, with downcast eyes,

And with a silent censer tempt the skies!-

Sound sense, integrity, a conscience clear,

Are begged aloud, that all at hand may hear;

But prayers like these (half whispered, half suppressed)

The tongue scarce hazards from the conscious breast:

"O that I could my rich old uncle see

In funeral pomp!-O that some deity

To pots of buried gold would guide my share!

O that my ward, whom I succeed as heir,

Were once at rest! Poor child, he lives in pain,

And death to him must be accounted gain.-

By wedlock thrice has Nerius swelled his store,

And now-he is a widower once more!"

The ingenious manner in which this prayer is framed so as to calm the conscience of the votary is admirably pointed out by Gifford. "The supplicant meditates no injury to any one. The death of his uncle is concealed under a wish that he could see his magnificent funeral, which, as the poor man must one day die, is a prayer becoming a pious nephew. The second petition is quite innocent.-If people will foolishly bury their gold and forget it, there is no more harm in his finding it than another. The third is even laudable; it is a prayer uttered in pure tenderness of heart, for the relief of a poor suffering child. With respect to the last, there can be no wrong in mentioning a fact which everybody knows. Not a syllable is said of his own wife; if the gods are pleased to take a hint and remove her, that is their concern; he never asked it."

One question, friend, an easy one, in fine:

What are thy thoughts of Jove? "My thoughts?" Yes, thine.

Wouldst thou prefer him to the herd of Rome?

To any individual?-But to whom?

To Statius, for example. Heavens! a pause?

Which of the two would best dispense of laws?

Best shield th' unfriended orphan? Good! Now move

The suit to Statius, late preferred to Jove:

"O Jove! Good Jove!" he cries, o'erwhelmed with shame,

And must not Jove himself "O Jove!" exclaim?

Or dost thou think the impious wish forgiven,

Because, when thunder shakes the vault of heaven,

The bolt innoxious flies o'er thee and thine,

To rend the forest oak and mountain pine?

Because, yet livid from the lightning's scath,

Thy smoldering corpse, a monument of wrath,

Lies in no blasted grove, for public care

To expiate, with sacrifice and prayer;

Must, therefore, Jove, unsceptered and unfeared

Give to thy ruder mirth his foolish beard?

What bribe hast thou to win the powers divine

Thus to thy rod?-The lungs and lights of swine!

Again, the ears of heaven are assailed by ignorant and superstitious prayers, against which the poet inveighs. Then follows a rebuke to those who pray for health and happiness, but who, by their vices and folly, thwart their own prayer.

Why do men pray so impiously and foolishly? It is because they entertain such ignorant and unworthy conceptions of the gods, because they think that they are beings of like passions with themselves. No, no! the gods have no such carnal passions, nor do they care for gold and the rich offerings of men's hands. They regard the heart of the worshiper, and if this is pure, even empty hands may bring an acceptable offering.

O grovelling souls, and void of things divine!

Why bring our passions to the Immortals' shrine,

And judge, from what this carnal sense delights,

Of what is pleasing in their purer sights?

This the Calabrian fleece with purple soils,

And mingles cassia with our native oils;

Tears from the rocky conch its pearly store,

And strains the metal from the glowing ore.

This, this, indeed, is vicious; yet it tends

To gladden life, perhaps, and boasts its ends;

But you, ye priests (for sure ye can), unfold-

In heavenly things, what boots this pomp of gold?

No more, in truth, than dolls to Venus paid,

The toys of childhood, by the riper maid!

No! let me bring the Immortals what the race

Of great Messala, now depraved and base,

On their huge charger, cannot;-bring a mind

Where legal and where moral sense are joined

With the pure essence; holy thoughts that dwell

In the soul's most retired and sacred cell;

A bosom dyed in honor's noblest grain,

Deep-dyed;-with these let me approach the fane,

And heaven will hear the humble prayer I make,

Though all my offering be a barley cake.

Gifford.