Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/692

662 P E R S I U S under Tiberius, Gains, and Claudius had not the genius to originate a literature of its own nor the sense of security which would enable it to perpetuate the literary accomplish ment of the preceding age. No period between the Cicer onian era and the reign of Hadrian was so unproductive. The accession of the young emperor, in whom were ulti mately realized the worst vices of the tyrant along with the most despicable weaknesses of the litterateur and artiste " scenicus ille " is the term of contempt applied to him in Tacitus gave a fresh impulse to that fashion of verse- making which Horace remarked as almost universal among his educated contemporaries, and which was stimulated by the rhetorical education of the day. But the writers of the Xeronian age had neither the genius nor the true sense of art which distinguished the Ciceronian and Augustan ages, nor had they acquired the cultivated appreciation and good taste of the later Flavian era, nor w r ere they animated by that sense of recovered freedom of speech and thought which gave to Roman literature its two last great repre sentatives. The writing of the Neronian age was, for the most part, a crude and ambitious effort to produce sensa tional effects by rhetorical emphasis. Of its representatives four can still be read with a certain though by no means an unmixed pleasure, Seneca, Lucan, Petronius, and Persius. Of these Persius had least of the true literary gift. He had neither the smooth and fluent elegance of Seneca, the " ingenium amoenum et auribus illius temporis accom- modatum " attributed to him by Tacitus, nor the rhetorical passion of Lucan, nor the cynical realism and power of representation which enabled Petronius to originate a new form of literature. Persius could not have become a satirist of the type of Petronius or of Martial : he could not have treated human degradation in a spirit of cynical sympathy or of amused tolerance. On the other hand earnest satire directed against its legitimate objects, the emperor and his favourites, could not at such a time express itself openly. "Pone Tigellinum" is an expressive reminder that it was safer to write sickly sentimentalism about "Phyllis and Hypsipyle " than to assume the role of Lucilius. But apart from the influence of his time and the natural limitations of his genius, the personal circumstances of Persius were unfavourable to success in the branch of literature to which he devoted himself. The shortness of his life and the retirement in which it was spent, his studious tastes, his delicate health, and that which is most admirable in him, his exceptional moral purity, all con tributed to keep him ignorant of that world which it is the business of a satirist to know. Lucilius, Horace, Petronius, Martial, Juvenal, were all men of the world, who knew the life of their day by close personal contact with it, and had no need to imagine it through the medium of impressions received from literature, or situations in vented as themes for rhetorical exercises. Some aspects of his time, such as the outward signs of literary affectation and effeminacy, did come within the range of Persius s observation, and these he describes with no want of the pungency, " Italum acetum," characteristic of his race. But from any intimate knowledge, even through the medium of conversation, of the vices and vulgarities from which Petronius lifts the curtain he was debarred by the purity alike of his moral instincts and of his taste. Thus his satire, while able to lash " the sickly morals " of his time ("pallentes radere mores") in fervid generalities, cannot perform the more important function of probing them through living examples. But Roman satire had another function besides the re presentation and criticism of men and manners. More than any other branch of literature it was the expression of the writer s own nature and convictions. The frank sincerity with which these were expressed was a great cause of the personal hold which Lucilius had on his readers ; it is still one of the secrets of the personal charm of Horace. The sympathy with which Persius was read in the early days of Christianity and the enthusiasm which many readers have felt for him in modern times are mainly due to the impression of character which he produces. But he is to be regarded further, not as an isolated specimen of purity in an impure age, but as an important witness of that undercurrent of moral and spiritual sentiment which gathered force as a protest against the corruption and tyranny of the first century of the empire. The conscious ness of moral evil which became intensified during that period is very apparent when we compare the spirit of Cicero and Horace, men in their own day seriously con cerned with questions of conduct, with that of Tacitus and Juvenal. This great inward change was stimulated and directed by the teaching of Stoicism ; and it was in the reign of Nero that Stoicism gained its chief ascendency over educated men, and supplanted among the adherents of the republic the fashionable Epicureanism of the days of Lucretius and Horace. Of the Stoical spirit of that time, represented also by Seneca and Lucan, Persius is the purest representative. His chief claim to consideration is, not that he is a great poet, satirist, or humorist, or even an agreeable writer, but that he is one of the earliest, and, amongst classical writers, one of the most sincere preachers of a pure personal morality based on a spiritual conception of religion. The impression of him produced by his writings is confirmed by the accounts transmitted of his life, for which we are indebted to the contemporary grammarian, Valerius Probus of Berytus. Written when the impression left by him was fresh on the memory of his friends, it may be accepted as trustworthy in regard both of outward facts and of the sentiments which he inspired. Well born and well connected, and the inheritor of a good estate, Persius lived the uneventful life of a student, and was chiefly remarkable for his affection for his friends, his teachers, and his family. He was a native of Etruria, a district which contributed less than any other in Italy to the literary distinction of Rome. And it is noticeable that, while Persius has all the characteristic moral fervour of the more serious Roman writers, he show r s less, compared with those who have an important place in the national litera ture, of that sensuous vivacity and susceptibility to beauty in art and nature with which the purely Italian race was pre eminently endowed. He was born at Yolaterrae in the year 34 A.D., and received his early education there. His father died when he was six years of age, and his mother, Fulvia Sisennia, whose latter name by its termination is indicative of an Etruscan stock, married a second time and was soon again left a widow. In one of the satires he speaks of the eagerness with which his father used to bring his friends to listen to his recitation of the dying speech of Cato. It is not likely that at the age of six he could have been so far advanced in his rhetorical education, and perhaps, though he uses the word "pater," this reminiscence, which is told not without satirical colouring, may be a testi mony to the interest which his stepfather took in watching his progress. The nature of the lesson " morituri verba Catonis" is suggestive of an early direction towards Stoicism given in his teaching ; but by what he tells us of his way of shirking his lessons and of his healthy pre ference of play to work, he seems to have done what he could to escape the doom of becoming a precocious prodigy. He W 7 as taken at the age of twelve to Rome, and continued his education under the two most famous grammarians and rhetoricians of the day, Remmius Pakcmon and Virginius Flavus. The decisive influence of his life was his friend ship with the Stoic philosopher, Annreus Cornutus, whose