TESTIMONIALS

OF ANCIENT WRITERS

CONCERNING PERSIUS.

M. Fabius Quintilian, Book 10 of the Institutio Oratoria, ch. 1.

Persius earned much and true glory, albeit with only one book.

M. Valerius Martial.

More often is Persius mentioned in a single book,

Than the fickle Marsus in his entire Amazonid.

From the Eusebian Chronicle of St. Jerome.

In the reign of Emperor Tiberius, Olympiad 203, Persius Flaccus, the Satirical poet, is born at Volaterrae.
In Olympiad 210, he dies in the 29th year of his age.
In Olympiad 211, Nero drives the philosopher Cornutus, the tutor of Persius, into exile.

St. Augustine, Book On the Teacher, ch. 9.

Persius prefers this one thing above all punishments that the cruelty of tyrants has devised or greed suffers, which is that men are tormented who are forced to acknowledge the vices they cannot avoid........Because to see virtue and not to hold it is a torture: which that same satirist wished upon tyrants, so that they might be punished.