25 - Persius

Summary

The satires of Persius are preceded by fourteen choliambic lines, which say in effect: 'I have not undergone any of the usual rituals of consecration; I only half belong to the bards' fraternity. But, as we know, the prospect of cash makes all kinds of untalented people poetic' By this disclaimer Persius hopes to win indulgence. The clichés of inspiration are presented with unmistakable irony: Persius has not drunk from the fons caballinus ‘the nag's spring’ (a deflationary translation of the Greek Hippocrene); ‘as far as he remembers’ he has not had any dreams on Mt Parnassus (a satirical reference to the dreams of Callimachus and Ennius); and he leaves the Heliconides ‘the daughters of Helicon’ to established writers. Nevertheless, although he is only ‘a half clansman’ (semipaganus), Persius does regard himself as in some sense a poeta with a carmen to contribute; and since his pose as a starving hack is clearly a comic device (because he was quite well off), we assume he has other reasons for writing.

The lines have caused much dispute, but while the choice of metre is odd (cf. Petronius, Satyricon 5), there is no good reason to doubt that they form a single piece and were intended to serve as a prologue, not as an epilogue.

Satire I

In Ovid (Met. ii.180ff.) we read how King Midas' barber discovered that his master had asses' ears and whispered the secret into a hole in the ground. Persius' secret, however, is that everyone in Rome has asses' ears; and instead of trying to bury it he confides it to his book.