Persius, Satires 6.6

Abstract

The purpose of this note is to defend the following reading, offered by a minority of manuscripts, at Sat. 6.6.Even if the evidence of the manuscripts showed merely that egregius… senes was an eleventh-century conjecture which gained a very moderate degree of acceptance, the reading would still have much to commend it.

Persius on Greeks, Jews and Barbarians

“…Persius was not interested in slaves or the kind of life they lived: the 2 3 4 I have used Clausen's edition (1959) for quotations from Persius. Some translations are my own; others have been taken or adapted from Jenkinson (1980), Lee & Barr (1987), or the Penguin edition (1973) by Rudd. Phalaris roasted his victims in a bronze bull that is here said to "bellow" to the screams of those roasting inside it (Pliny HN 34.89).…”

Persius' Didactic Satire: The Pupil as Teacher

“…Accordingly the rhetoric of any attempt to foreclose on the issue will display in its very assurance, or (to put it more bluntly) its strain, the desire to think away its problematic, as in: 'The presentation of Stoic doctrines as such, and in a universal way, was Persius' central desire and satura suggested itself as a naturally convenient form for his purpose.' 3 Alternatively the difference that Persius' poetry constitutes has, often enough, been recognised and yet reclaimed by recourse to a deft epithet-noun coinage ad hoc: e.g. 'The Philosopher-Satirist'.…”