INTRODUCTION
But the idea that Nero was the object of attack in the 1st Satire could not be allowed to drop; it was soon developed by the commentators, and became parent of the idea that Persius was obscure. Supposed references to Nero were found to lurk in every line of Sat. i.; and it was even discovered that Nero was also the covert object of attack in the 4th Satire—an idea which has not even yet departed from the pages of some of our modern commentators. The height of absurdity was reached by the Scholiast who, when commenting on the four lines ridiculed in Sat. i. 99-103, informs us verba Neronis sunt; to which a more recent annotator added that the lines are taken from a tragedy, supposed to be written by Nero, called the Bacchantes. No such play has ever been heard of; no tragic play that was ever written would contain passages in dactylic hexameters; yet we are actually asked to believe that a critic like Cornutus, so anxious to score out a harmless reference to King Midas for fear that Nero might take it to himself, allowed four whole lines, known by everybody to have formed part of a play of Nero's, to stand uncorrected! Thus the original idea on which the charge of obscurity mainly rested falls to the ground, and we may apply his own motto to the interpreting of his difficulties—nec te quaesiveris extra.
