perfectly clear that in that connexion they could not have given offence to the emperor, whoever he was, since the Satire sets out from the first with such praise as the worst of these princes coveted and rewarded, praise for his exclusive support of learning. If therefore it had been possible to admit these verses as the cause of Domitian's displeasure, it must have been when they appeared separately as an epigram, or with a different context from the present, which it must be admitted they do not very well suit, if, as seems certain, the rest of the Satire was written long after Paris' death. It is the way with the Roman Satirists to represent living names and characters by dead, and some have supposed that by Paris is meant a favourite actor of a later reign. But though there may have been later counterparts of Statius, it is not likely that there was another Paris, or any one whom his name would represent, whether with Hermann we refer the Satire to Trajan's time, or, as I believe it should be, to Hadrian's.

เ

As to the place of Juvenal's supposed exile, I do not think it necessary to argue the subject against Francke', who denies the fact and declares Juvenal never was in Egypt at all, or Hermann3, who holds that he was sent to Scotland. I have no doubt he had been in Egypt before he wrote the fifteenth Satire. That he ever visited Britain I think cannot be proved, an is not very likely. It is enough to say that Agricola fought the last battle in Caledonia (on the Grampians) A.D. 84, in which year he was recalled, having completely subdued the country. But we have seen that Juvenal was at Rome as late as A.D. 94, after which there was no fighting against the Scoti, and if it was the emperor's desire that the poet should be killed, as the Grammarian says, he would not have been sent to join the troops in Britain for that purpose. The inscription quoted by Hermann, if genuine, and if it refers to our Juvenal, proves nothing in favour of a Caledonian exile.

Of Juvenal's personal character it is not so easy to form an estimate from his writings as it is of Horace's. That his invectives against the vices of his time are not the mere artistic and declamatory compositions which some writers suppose them to be, but the fruits of an honest indignation, of rare powers of sarcasm, and of a large knowledge of the world, I think is manifest. His language is unreserved in dealing with the foulest vices, but there is no appearance of his being himself a loose liver in any part of his writings. When Horace is coarse he betrays something of sympathy with vice, while Juvenal shows only contempt for it. Although therefore an expurgated edition of Juvenal would

2 Examen criticum Decii Junii Juvenalis vitae, Altona, 1820, and Quaestio altera, Dorpat, 1827.

3 Preface to his edition, Leipzig, 1854, and De Satirae Septimae Temporibus Disputatio, Göttingen, 1843.

have more gaps than an expurgated edition of Horace, a well-regulate mind would be less offended with the entire text of Juvenal than wit' that of Horace. Juvenal's morality was of a higher and less techni sort than Horace's, and has led some into the notion that he drew it from the purest source, and was in understanding, if not by profession. a Christian. This of course is absurd. He knew human nature, an he knew right from wrong, and was not blinded by self-indulgence, an so was able to state the law of conscience in a way to astonish som Christians, to whom that law is very imperfectly known.

Apart from his morality Juvenal was a great master of words, and had a large fund of illustration. His pictures drawn from real life, as I have observed in the course of the notes, are particularly happy: whethe they represent the common room of a tavern, or the deck of a ship, or the inside of a soldier's hut or of a camp, or a schoolroom, or the greedy crowd at the sportula, or the streets of Rome, or a drunken braw!, these and a hundred other scenes are so drawn that an artist woul! have no difficulty in transferring them to canvas. But his hand must be vigorous and his brush free, or he would do no justice to Juvenal.

There is one particular form of lust from which modern wickedness shrinks, but which was one of the worst evils of Roman society under the Empire. This vice is exposed in two Satires of great power (ii. ix.`. The wickedness of women was never so unsparingly handled as it is in the sixth Satire, a composition of extraordinary power and variety. The general degradation of Roman life and manners is exposed in the first, third, and fourteenth Satires, and in the last of these the chief cause of the universal wickedness is laid open in the indifference of parents to the morals of their young children, and the example which handed down Ivice as an inheritance from father to son. The degradation of the Senate, once the fountain of honour and authority, and the proudes: institution of a haughty people, but now obedient to the wantonness a tyrant who mocked its weakness and played with its servility, amusingly shown in the fourth Satire. The fifth exposes a differensort of servility, that of parasites, who sell their independence an. accept contempt for the sake of a meal grudgingly given, a low practic which was more systematized at Rome, if it was not much more common, than it is in our own country. The neglect of literary men has a Satiro to itself (the seventh); aristocratic pride has another (the eighth). T.cunning of will-hunters is hit off at the end of the twelfth, which is not among the most interesting of these compositions. It relates chiefly to the arrival of a friend after a dangerous voyage, and is more of th nature of a familiar letter than of a Satire. The dishonesty of the age is described in the thirteenth Satire, which contains some of Juvenal's finest verses, and shows him in the best character. This also is in the form of

an epistle to a friend, and so is the eleventh, which contains an invitation to dinner, and contrasts the poet's own plainness of living with the luxurious habits of his contemporaries. Thus Juvenal goes through all the great scandals of his day, and treats them unsparingly. The crimes and criminals of former reigns are freely introduced by way of illustration, but this is because the vices of one reign represented those of another, and the names of the dead could be more safely used than of the living. Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Otho, Domitian, are all brought up from time to time to point a moral or illustrate some aspect of crime.

The most celebrated of Juvenal's poems, the tenth, has more of the declamatory character, which some of his critics attribute to all. It is on the vanity of human wishes, which, is illustrated chiefly by historical examples, and the poem has not much bearing upon the particular character of the times. It is the finest specimen of that sort of composition that I am acquainted with. The fifteenth Satire is connected with a scene of little general interest, an Egyptian squabble, Juvenal's own interest in which can only be accounted for by his having been in the country where it happened. The last Satire, if it had been completed, would have furnished a sketch of military life, sarcastic but goodhumoured, from which a good deal of information might have been derived.

G

LIFE OF PERSIUS.

THE principal facts of Persius' life may be gathered from a memoir of which the following is a literal translation. The author, by some supposed to be Suetonius, cannot be conjectured with probability. It appears in most of the old MSS. of Persius, and in some of the oldest is said to be extracted from a commentary of Valerius Probus. That name is given to other memoirs besides this, and whether it represents one, or two, or several early Grammarians, is uncertain. There is no doubt however that the account is very old, and the statements have an air of truth which is confirmed by internal evidence. There is little in Persius' writings on which to construct an imaginary biography, and this is so far a guarantee for the genuineness of this Grammarian's facts.

"Aulus Persius Flaccus was born the day before the nones of December, in the consulship of Fabius Persicus and L. Vitellius'. He died the eighth day before the kalends of December, in the consulship of P. Marius and Asinius Gallus'. He was born [in Etruria3], at Volaterrae, a Roman eques, by blood and marriage connected with men of the highest rank. He died at the eighth milestone on the Appian road, on his own estate. His father Flaccus left him a minor, about six years old. His mother Fulvia Sisennia afterwards married Fusius, a Roman eques, and him too she buried within a few years. Flaccus pursued his studies until his twelfth year at Volaterrae; after that at Rome with the grammarian Remmius Palaemon, and the rhetorician Virginius Flavus. When he was sixteen years old he first began to enjoy the friendship of Annaeus Cornutus, on such terms that he never left him for any one else, and by him he was initiated to a certain extent in philosophy. He had for his friends from his earliest youth, Caesius Bassus, and Calpurnius Sura3, who died young during Persius' lifetime.

14th December, A.D. 34.

3 Heinrich puts these words in brackets.

2 24th November, A.D. 62.

+ Most MSS. have Flaccus; but Flavus is the reading of one of the oldest, and is probably the true name.

5 The common reading is Statura.

He reverenced as a father Servilius Nonianus. Through Cornutus he made the acquaintance of Annaeus Lucanus likewise, who was of his own age and a disciple of Cornutus. Now Cornutus was a tragic writer of that day', of the Stoic sect, and he left behind him books of philosophy. Lucanus so admired the writings of Flaccus, that while he was reciting he could scarcely refrain from crying out [and saying that this was true poetry]. He became acquainted with Seneca also, late in life, but not so as to be taken by his character. He enjoyed in Cornutus' house the society of two most learned men of very holy lives, at that time earnestly engaged in philosophy, namely, Claudius Agathemerus, a physician of Lacedaemon, and Petronius Aristocrates of Magnesia, whom above all others he admired and emulated, for they were his contemporaries and disciples of Cornutus. He was also for nearly ten years greatly beloved by Paetus Thrasea, so that he travelled with him. sometimes, Thrasea having married Persius' kinswoman Arria. He was a man of most gentle manners, of maidenly modesty, of handsome form, and a pattern of piety towards his mother, and sister, and aunt. He was discreet and chaste. He left about two million sesterces to his mother and sister, and only wrote a note to his mother, asking her to give Cornutus a hundred thousand sesterces, as some say, but as others will have it, twenty pounds' weight of wrought silver, and about seven hundred volumes of Chrysippus, or all his library'. But Cornutus took the books and left the money for his mother and sister, whom he had made his heirs. He wrote seldom and slowly. This very book he left unfinished. Some verses have been taken from the end of the book, that it might seem finished. Cornutus made some trifling corrections; and when Caesius Bassus asked that he might himself be allowed to edit it, he gave it him for that purpose. Flaccus also in his boyhood had written a comedy called Restio', and one book of 'Ocoinopiά, and

6 By Annaeum etiam Lucanum' he means Lucanus, who was also one of the Annaei, as Cornutus himself was.

7 Tragicus,' the reading of all the MSS., is most probably corrupt.

8" Quin illa esse vera poemata diceret." These words are no doubt an interpolation. Heinrich thinks the interpolator had in mind the modest language of Persius in the Prologus.

9 Cornuti minores.' The common reading is 'Cornuto.' Agathemerus' name is given as Agaternus in the MSS. See below.

This should be 'or as some say,' but the text is defective. (Heinrich.) As to the books of Chrysippus, see Introduction to S. v.

2 The MSS. have" pecuniam sororibus quas frater heredes fecerat reliquit," which contradicts what has just been said. 'Frater' was added when the first mistake, ' sororibus,' was made.

3 The MSS. have Vescio. Heinrich changes this to Restio, the Ropemaker, which was the title of one of Laberius' farces.

4 “ 'Odvɩπoperův librum unum." See below.