A. PERSIUS FLACCUS

L I F E.

Aulus Persius Flaccus was born at Volaterrae in Etruria, in the consulship of Fabius Persicus and L. Vitellius, about the twentieth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, nearly two years after Christ suffered. His father was Flaccus, a Roman Knight, whom he lost when he was six years old. His mother was Fulvia Sisenna, toward whom he was remarkably pious, as he was also toward his sisters; this is declared more fully at the beginning of the sixth satire, at verse 6, the words: now for me the Ligurian coast warms. When he was twelve years old, he came to Rome, where he heard Remmius Palaemon the Grammarian, and indeed the rhetorician Virginius Flavius, or as others say, Flaccus. At the age of sixteen, he devoted his efforts to Annaeus Cornutus, a leader of Stoic philosophy, whom he also admired wonderfully and by whom he was equally loved, as is evident from the fifth satire. Moreover, he bequeathed to him a not insignificant sum of money, namely one hundred thousand sesterces, or as others wish, twenty pounds of worked silver, in addition to his library, in which some count seven hundred books of Chrysippus. But Cornutus accepted the books, yet left the money to the sisters of Persius, whom he had made his heirs. He died from a stomach ailment in the very flower of his youth, namely in his twenty-eighth year, or not much later, and about the eighth year of the reign of Nero, whatever others might say, and Jerome himself, which Casaubon observes excellently, as he does everything. That Persius was, as Probus relates, truly of virginal modesty, a sincere mind, intensely learned, certainly sharp and impatient of vices, and an assiduous imitator of Lucilius and Horace, is sufficiently proven by his satires, which are filled with learning and wisdom from the Stoa. Regarding these, furthermore, it is to be noted that in ancient manuscripts they are sometimes found without any distinction, as if it were one continuous book, which Priscianus, Quintilian, and others acknowledge, when they call it not the "Satires" of Persius, but "the book." In some, however, only five satires are counted, with the fourth joined to the third. He had written...