Post-Augustan Poetry From Seneca to Juvenal Part 36

201. For further examples cp. _H.F._ 5-18, _Troades_ 215-19.

202. This terse stabbing rhetoric is characteristic of Stoicism; the same short, jerky sentences reappear in Epictetus. Seneca is doubtless influenced by the declamatory rhetoric of schools as well, but his philosophical training probably did much to form his style.

203. Exceptions are so few as to be negligible. The effect of this rule is aggravated by the fact that in nine cases out of ten the accent of the word and the metrical ictus 'clash', this result being obtained 'by most violent elisions, such as rarely or never occur in the other feet of the verse'. Munro, J. Phil. 6, 75.

204. The older and more rugged iambic survives in the fables of Phaedrus, written at no distant date from these plays, if not actually contemporary.

205. Cp. Leo, op. cit. i. 166, 174.

206. See p. 29.

207. These horrors go beyond the crucifixion scene in the Laureolus (see p. 24), and the tradition of genuine tragedy was all against such presentation. As far as the grotesqueness and bombast of the plays go, the age of Nero might have tolerated them. We must remember that seventeenth-century England enjoyed the brilliant bombast of Dryden (e.g. in _Aurungzebe_) and that the eighteenth delighted in the crude absurdities of such plays as _George Barnwell_.

208. Cp. also _Phaedra_ 707, where Hippolytus' words, 'en impudic.u.m crine contorto caput laeva reflexi,' can only be justified as inserted to explain to the hearers what they could not see. See also p. 48, note.

209. They have been influenced by the pantomimus and the dramatic recitation so fas.h.i.+onable in their day, inasmuch as they lack connexion, and, though containing effective episodes, are of far too loose a texture to be effective drama.

210. See R. Fischer, _Die Kunstentwicklung der englischen TraG.o.die_; J.

W. Cunliffe, _Influence of Seneca on Elizabethan Tragedy_; J. E. Manly, _Introductory Essay_ to Miller's _Translation of the Tragedies of Seneca_. The Senecan drama finds its best modern development in the tragedies of Alfieri. Infinitely superior in every respect as are the plays of the modern dramatist, he yet reveals in a modified form not a few of Seneca's faults. There is often a tendency to bombast, an exaggeration of character, a hardness of outline, that irresistibly recall the Latin poet.

211. The debt is as good as acknowledged, ll. 58 sqq.

212. ll. 310 sqq.

213. l. 915.

214. There is no direct evidence of the s.e.x of the chorus in the _Octavia_. In Greek drama they would almost certainly have been women.

215. The diction is wholly un-Senecan. There is no straining after epigram; the dialogue, though not lacking point (e.g. the four lines 185-8, or 451-60), does not bristle with it, and is far less rhetorical and more natural. The chorus confines itself to anapaests, is simpler and far more relevant. The all-pervading Stoicism is the one point they have in common.

216. The imitation of Lucan in 70, 71 'magni resto nominis umbra,' is also strong evidence against the Senecan authors.h.i.+p.

217. _Probus, vita_. 'A. Persius Flaccus natus est pridie non. Dec.

Fabio Persico, L. Vitellio coss.' Hieronym. ad ann. 2050=34 A.D.

'Persius Flaccus Satiricus Volaterris nascitur.' Where not otherwise stated the facts of Persius' life are drawn from the biography of Probus.

218. Quint, vii. 4, 40; Tac. _Ann_. xv. 71.

219. Suet. _de Gramm_. 23.

220. Ba.s.sus was many years his senior--addressed as _senex_ in Sat. vi.

6, written late in 61 or early in 62 A.D.--and perished in the eruption of Vesuvius, 79 A. D. Cp. Schol. _ad Pers_. vi. 1.

221. Lucan was five years his junior. Cp. p. 97.

222. Cp. Tac. _Ann_. xiv. 19; _Dial_. 23; Quint. x. 1. 102.

223. This friends.h.i.+p lasted ten years, presumably the last ten of Persius' life; cp. _Prob. vit_.

The second satire is addressed to Plotius Macrinus, who, according to the scholiast, was a learned man, who 'loved Persius as his son, having studied with him in the house of Servilius Nonia.n.u.s.'

224. See O. Jahn's ed., p. 240.

225. _Prob. vit_.'decessit VIII Kal. Dec. P. Mario, Afinio Gallio coss.'

Hieronym. ad ann. 2078--62 A.D. 'Persius moritur anno aetatis XXVIII.'

226. _Prob. vit_.

227. Such at least is a plausible inference. Probus tells us that he used to travel abroad with Thrasea. It is a natural conjecture that these _hodoeporica_ were in the style of Horace's journey to Brundisium.

228. Cp. Mart. i. 13; Plin. _Ep_. iii. 16. She was the mother of the wife of Thrasea.

229. This may mean that the last satire was actually incomplete, but that the omission of a few lines at the end gave it an appearance of completion; or that a few lines intended for the opening of a seventh satire were omitted.

230. So Probus. Cp. also Quint. x. 1. 94 'multum et verae gloriae quamvis uno libro meruit.' Mart. iv. 29. 7.

231. Hieronym. _in apol. contra Rufin._ i. 16 'puto quod puer legeris ... commentarios ... aliorum in alios, Plautum videlicet, Lucretium, Flacc.u.m, Persium atque Lucanum.' The high moral tone of the work, coupled perhaps with the smallness of its bulk, is in the main responsible for its survival. Scholia from different sources have come down to us under the t.i.tle of _Cornuti commentum_. Whether such a person as the commentator Cornutus existed or not is uncertain. The name may have been attached to the scholia merely to give them a spurious importance as though possessing the imprimatur of the friend and teacher of the poet.

232. The choliambi are placed after the satires by two of the three best MSS., but before them by the scholia and inferior MSS. It is of little importance which we follow. But it seems probable that Probus (see below) regarded the choliambi as a prologue. Such at least is my interpretation of _sibi primo_ (i.e. in the prologue) _mox omnibus detrectaturus._ The lines have rather more force if read first and not last.

233. _Prob. vit._ 'sed mox ut a schola magistrisque devert.i.t, lecto Lucili libro decimo vehementer saturas componere studuit; cuius libri principium imitatus est, sibi primo, mox omnibus detrectaturus, c.u.m tanta recentium poetarum et oratorum insectatione,' &c. This can only refer to the prologue and the first satire, and seems to point to its having been the first to be composed. According to the scholiast the opening line is taken from the first satire of Lucilius.

234. Porphyr. _ad Hor. Sat._ i. 10. 53 'facit autem Lucilius hoc c.u.m alias tum vel maxime in tertio libro, ... et nono et decimo.

235. Cp. Nettles.h.i.+p's note ad loc., and Petron. 4.

236. e.g. Dama, Davus, Natta, Nerius, Craterus, Pedius, Bestius.

237. Instances might be almost indefinitely multiplied. The whole of Pers. i, but more especially the conclusion, is strongly influenced by Hor. _Sat._ i. 10. Cp. also Pers. ii. 12, Hor. _Sat._ ii. 5. 45; Pers. iii. 66, Hor. _Ep._ i. 18. 96; Pers. v. 10, Hor. _Sat._ i. 4.

19, &c., &c.

238. i. 92-102. According to the scholiast the last four lines--

torva Mimalloneis implerunt cornua bombis, et raptum vitulo caput ablatura superbo Ba.s.saris et lyncem Maenas flexura corymbis euhion ingeminat, reparabilis adsonat echo (i. 99)--

are by Nero. But it is incredible that Persius should have had such audacity as openly to deride the all-powerful emperor. The same remark applies to other pa.s.sages where the scholiast and some modern critics have seen satirical allusions to Nero (e.g. prologue and the whole of Sat. iv). The only pa.s.sage in which it is possible that there was a covert allusion to Nero is i. 121, which, according to the scholiast, originally ran _auriculas asini Mida rex habet_. Cornutus suppressed the words _Mida rex_ and subst.i.tuted _quis non_. For an ingenious defence of the view that Persius. .h.i.ts directly at Nero see Pretor, _Cla.s.s. Rev_., vol. xxi, p. 72.

239. i. 76 'Est nunc Brisaei quem venosus liber Acci, sunt quos Pacuviusque et verrucosa moretur Antiopa, aerumnis cor luctificabile fulta.'

240. The description of the self-indulgent man who, feeling ill, consults his doctor and then fails to follow his advice (iii. 88), is a possible exception. It is noteworthy that in Sat. iv he addresses a young aspirant to a political career as though free political action was still possible at Rome.

241. e.g. iv. 41.

242. But see below, p. 91.

243. Prob. vita Persii.

244. Our chief authorities for Lucan's life are the 'lives' by Suetonius (fragmentary) and by Vacca (a grammarian of the sixth century).