a part of wisdom to know when to begin to indulge one's self, although Persius does not say so plainly; one great lesson is how to turn softly round the goal, and where to start for the turn. The poet is probably thinking of the Greek chariot race in Homer, which was there and back, rather than of the Roman, which was round and round the circus. He would think also of Plato, who more than once alludes to the division of the race of life into two halves, which have each a law and a chance of their own. After asking the question where and when to turn the goal, the next question Persius bids us answer is, What fortune ought a man to make? what is the use to be made of money fresh from the mint? how much ought to be bestowed on the public and the family? It is quite of a piece with this that the main object of studying philosophy is to provide for a cheerful old-age. Most old men whom the satirist knew struck him as peevish and ridiculous; they were simply miserable, as they lived upon the scanty satisfactions that the courtesy of their juniors still vouchsafed to their vanity. A philosopher like Cornutus can teach a young man how to take precaution betimes against this wretched lot; it is only needful to study the duties of his station methodically, and fulfil them steadily. He is not to overrate his importance or to take too much upon himself; he is to consider what his station is in the race, what share he is to take in the commonwealth of man. The important thing is not to fret at seeing your neighbors get on quicker than you do, and not to overrate the value of the well-stocked storeroom of an advocate in good country practice. It is noticeable throughout that Persius's ideas of wealth are modest. Both Juvenal and Horace have ideas of magnificent extravagance which are quite beyond him: marble villas, costly banquets, and wasteful profusion are unknown to him; the worst extravagance that strikes him as possible is taken from Horace at second-hand. A man may beggar himself in largesses of vetches and beans that old men may remember, as they sun themselves, what a Feast of Flowers they had when he was ædile. The life that he seems to understand is the life of Roman dinner-parties and recitations, of which he had glimpses enough to fill him with contempt;

there is not a hint of the plague of morning visits to grandees of which Martial and Juvenal are full. All that he has to say is that a bold poet runs the risk of being coldly received when he calls, and that a student of philosophy must not pride himself on being able to call on a censor cousin any more than on his long Tuscan pedigree. But what he knows best is the life of a rich thrifty farmer. He is at home with Ventidius, who has a Sabine farm, to be sure, but one that it would tire a kite to fly over; who groans as he says grace at his harvest home, and sups the mothery lees of spoilt vinegar, while his hinds fare better than he. The country to Persius is always "teeming:" he has no feeling for the cottage farms over which Horace, and even Juvenal, are so enthusiastic; he just condescends to recollect that bad poets were apt to remember the furrows where Serranus was sowing when they made him dictator. He has a good deal of humor, which is seen to as much advantage in the prologue as anywhere; he laughs at Ennius with his vision of Homer and Parnassus, and at his contemporaries who had their busts finished with ivy wreaths, and liked to be told they had got pale with their draughts of Pirene. For himself, he is but half a brother of the starveling guild, who are trained by hunger just like so many parrots and pies, who would turn poets too if they had wit enough to be duped by the prospect of being paid for their strains. The description of the husbandman's prayers who ruins himself in sacrifices is racy; and so is the description of the pious grandam who sanctifies the baby with her spittle before she proceeds to bless it; while for himself the poet begs that Jupiter will refuse to hear the prayers of grandam or nurse, although she may have dressed in white to make them."

It has been noticed by Professor Conington that, while we can trace a very close parallelism to Horace in subject and

1 Persius is rather fond of this word sorbere: he uses it three times (iv. 16, iv. 32, v. 112) when potare would be quite as convenient; probably because the latter was a little hackneyed, and having got hold of a word that he hopes is picturesque, he keeps to it, and never uses either of the common words for drink at all.

2 II. 44 sqq.

II. 39, 40.

treatment, all the traditions we have tell us much more of Persius's imitations of Lucilius, to whom perhaps we owe Bestius with his regrets for the good old times before Romans knew Greek or had an idea of philosophy.' As an imitator, who reproduced the last book he had read which suited him with an air of genuine originality, Persius may remind some readers of Keats; though Keats has of course much more power and charm, to say nothing of his wider range. Persius, one can see, limited his range voluntarily. He enjoyed the Bay of Spezzia, and Statius or Vergil would have taken the opportunity of a pretty description: all that Persius tells us is that "the Ligurian coast is warm round him, and his dear sea spends winter with him where the rocks spread their giant sides and the shore draws back into a deep valley." But this is not enough to do justice to his feeling, so he flies off to quote Ennius, who had praised the place before him; and condescendingly assures us that the old poet had recovered his senses by then. The union of naïveté and scornfulness and feeling is characteristic. It is characteristic in another way, that Persius takes for granted the principle of suiting your dinner to your company, which scandalizes Martial and Juvenal. He thought it just as obviously absurd to set turbots. before freedmen as to train one's own palate to the point of knowing a hen thrush by her flavor from a cock; and both were as bad as to buy brine by the cupful for a birthday dinner, and then make it a substitute for oil instead of an addition to it; though all decent people had a jar of brine in stock, and oiled their greens every day, and flavored them with brine when they had a mind. It is to be noticed throughout that Persius has nothing of the fitful asceticism which we find in Seneca. He speaks of how he and Cornutus used to enjoy supping together after the day's work was over, and go on into the night, which was not the custom of

VI. 37. Which can hardly have kept their vigor unimpaired for two hundred years and more; for Juvenal does not complain of Greek doctrines, but of the personal intrusion of individual Greeks, whose numbers and intrigues were too much for any ordinary Roman.

2 VI. 19-24.

ordinary revellers, who began early and were sleepy when night came on; so that Persius claims credit for temperance as well as for geniality. Nero and his courtiers, to be sure, revelled till midnight and later, but this was exceptional.

CHAPTER III.

PETRONIUS.

PETRONIUS ARBITER was a contemporary of Persius, who made his reputation out of his courage in turning day into night, and night into day. He did not neglect his business like other voluptuaries; he did not arrange his time to suit the engagements of other respectable people, but slept all day and worked and played all night, and, being clever and capable (for he governed Bithynia well), had a great name among the intimates of Nero, who gave him the title of arbiter elegantiarum. He was driven to suicide A.D. 66 by the jealousy of Tigellinus; and, like most of his contemporaries in that case, decided to bleed to death, amusing himself during the process as well as he could, and sometimes stopping the bleeding for a time when he found the trivial conversation most interesting. Before dying he sent Nero a satire upon his vices, and destroyed two murrhine vases which the emperor coveted. He is generally admitted to be the author of a long novel of which we have a few fragments from the later books. To judge from these the plan was very curious: it combined a series of shabby adventures of the kind which Le Sage affects, only with much more love, or what did duty for it, with a pretty complete criticism of contemporary literature. The travellers pass from one scrape to another, and from one low scene of debauchery to another, and are always ready to lecture upon the decay of letters and to supply specimens of how subjects ought to be treated. There is never any trace of irony in these disquisitions, and we must suppose that Petronius of all people wished to place his views of respectability and a sound education upon record. Most of the adventures are indecent enough, and dull into the bargain; they turn upon all kinds of voluntary and involuntary assignations