University of Virginia Library

Parnassus and Helicon were hills consecrated to the Muses, and the supposed place of their abode. Parnassus was forked on the top; and from Helicon ran a stream, the spring of which was called the Muses' Well.

Pyrene, a fountain in Corinth, consecrated also to the Muses.

The statues of the poets were crowned with ivy about their brows.

Before the shrine; that is, before the shrine of Apollo, in his temple at Rome, called the Palatine.

Nothing is remaining of Atticus Labeo (so he is called by the learned Casaubon); nor is he mentioned by any other poet besides Persius. Casaubon, from an old commentator on Persius, says that he made a very foolish translation of Homer's Iliads.

He describes a poet, preparing himself to rehearse his works in public, which was commonly performed in August. A room was hired, or lent, by some friend; a scaffold was raised, and a pulpit placed for him who was to hold forth; who borrowed a new gown, or scoured his old one, and adorned his ears with jewels, etc.

Trees of that kind grow wild in many parts of Italy, and make their way through rocks, sometimes splitting the tombstones.

The Romans wrote on cedar and cypress tables, in regard of the duration of the wood. Ill verses might justly be afraid of frankincense; for the papers in which they were written, were fit for nothing but to wrap it up.

Writings of noblemen, whose bedsteads were of the wood of citron.

Janus was the first king of Italy, who refuged Saturn when he was expelled, by his son Jupiter, from Crete (or, as we now call it, Candia). From his name the first month of the year is called January. He was pictured with two faces, one before and one behind—as regarding the past time and the future. Some of the mythologists think he was Noah, for the reason given above.

He speaks of the country in the foregoing verses; the praises of which are the most easy theme for poets, but which a bad poet cannot naturally describe: then he makes a digression to Romulus, the first king of Rome, who had a rustical education; and enlarges upon Quintius Cincinnatus, a Roman senator, who was called from the plough to be dictator of Rome.

Persius here names antitheses, or seeming contradictions; which, in this place, are meant for rhetorical flourishes, as I think, with Casaubon.

Foolish verses of Nero, which the poet repeats; and which cannot be translated properly into English.

Other verses of Nero, that were mere bombast. I only note, that the repetition of these and the former verses of Nero, might justly give the poet a caution to conceal his name.

Poems on the Mænades, who were priestesses of Bacchus; and of Atys, who made himself an eunuch to attend on the sacrifices of Cybele, called Berecynthia by the poets. She was mother of the gods.

Two snakes, twined with each other, were painted on the walls, by the ancients, to show the place was holy.

Lucilius wrote long before Horace, who imitates his manner of satire, but far excels him in the design.

The story is vulgar, that Midas, king of Phrygia, was made judge betwixt Apollo and Pan, who was the best musician: he gave the prize to Pan; and Apollo, in revenge, gave him ass's ears. He wore his hair long to hide them; but his barber discovering them, and not daring to divulge the secret, dug a hole in the ground, and whispered into it: the place was marshy; and, when the reeds grew up, they repeated the words which were spoken by the barber. By Midas, the poet meant Nero.

Eupolis and Cratinus, as also Aristophanes, mentioned afterwards, were all Athenian poets; who wrote that sort of comedy which was called the Old Comedy, where the people were named who were satirised by those authors.

The people of Rome, in the time of Persius, were apt to scorn the Grecian philosophers, particularly the Cynics and Stoics, who were the poorest of them.

Arithmetic and geometry were taught on floors, which were strewed with dust, or sand; in which the numbers and diagrams were made and drawn, which they might strike out at pleasure.

The Romans were used to mark their fortunate days, or anything that luckily befell them, with a white stone, which they had from the island Creta, and their unfortunate with a coal.

Hercules was thought to have the key and power of bestowing all hidden treasure.

The ancients thought themselves tainted and polluted by night itself, as well as bad dreams in the night; and therefore purified themselves by washing their heads and hands every morning, which custom the Turks observe to this day.

When any one was thunderstruck, the soothsayer (who is here called Ergenna) immediately repaired to the place, to expiate the displeasure of the gods, by sacrificing two sheep.

The poet laughs at the superstitious ceremonies which the old women made use of in their lustration, or purification days, when they named their children, which was done on the eighth day to females, and on the ninth to males.

It was the opinion both of Grecians and Romans, that the gods, in visions and dreams, often revealed to their favourites a cure for their diseases, and sometimes those of others. Thus Alexander dreamed of an herb which cured Ptolemy. These gods were principally Apollo and Esculapius; but, in aftertimes, the same virtue and goodwill was attributed to Isis and Osiris. Which brings to my remembrance an odd passage in Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici, or in his Vulgar Errors; the sense whereof is, that we are beholden, for many of our discoveries in physic, to the courteous revelation of spirits. By the expression of “visions purged from phlegm,” our author means such dreams or visions as proceed not from natural causes, or humours of the body, but such as are sent from heaven; and are, therefore, certain remedies.

Brazen vessels, in which the public treasures of the Romans were kept: it may be the poet means only old vessels, which were called Κρονια, from the Greek name of Saturn. Note also, that the Roman treasury was in the temple of Saturn.

Under Numa, the second king of Rome, and for a long time after him, the holy vessels for sacrifice were of earthenware; according to the superstitious rites which were introduced by the same Numa: though afterwards, when Memmius had taken Corinth, and Paulus Emilius had conquered Macedonia, luxury began amongst the Romans, and then their utensils of devotion were of gold and silver, etc.

The wool of Calabria was of the finest sort in Italy, as Juvenal also tells us. The Tyrian stain is the purple colour dyed at Tyrus; and I suppose, but dare not positively affirm, that the richest of that dye was nearest our crimson, and not scarlet, or that other colour more approaching to the blue. I have not room to justify my conjecture.

Those baby-toys were little babies, or poppets, as we call them; in Latin, pupæ: which the girls, when they came to the age of puberty, or child-bearing, offered to Venus; as the boys, at fifteen, offered their bullæ, or bosses.

A cake of barley, or coarse wheat-meal, with the bran in it: the meaning is, that God is pleased with the pure and spotless heart of the offerer, and not with the riches of the offering. Laberius, in the fragments of his Mimes, has a verse like this, “Puras Deus non plenas aspicit manus.”—What I had forgotten before, in its due place, I must here tell the reader, that the first half of this satire was translated by one of my sons, now in Italy; but I thought so well of it, that I let it pass without any alteration.

The students used to write their notes on parchments; the inside, on which they wrote, was white; the other side was hairy, and commonly yellow. Quintilian reproves this custom, and advises rather table-books, lined with wax, and a style, like that we use in our vellum table-books, as more easy.

Before eating, it was customary to cut off some part of the meat, which was first put into a pan, or little dish, then into the fire, as an offering to the household gods: this they called a libation.

The Tuscans were accounted of most ancient nobility, Horace observes this in most of his compliments to Mæcenas, who was derived from the old kings of Tuscany; now the dominion of the Great Duke.

The Roman knights, attired in the robe called trabea, were summoned by the censor to appear before him, and to salute him in passing by, as their names were called over. They led their horses in their hands. See more of this in Pompey's Life, written by Plutarch.

Some of the Sicilian kings were so great tyrants, that the name is become proverbial. The brazen bull is a known story of Phalaris, one of those tyrants, who, when Perillus, a famous artist, had presented him with a bull of that metal hollowed within, which, when the condemned person was inclosed in it, would render the sound of a bull's roaring, caused the workman to make the first experiment—docuitque suum mugire juvencum.

He alludes to the story of Damocles, a flatterer of one of those Sicilian tyrants, namely Dionysius. Damocles had infinitely extolled the happiness of kings: Dionysius, to convince him of the contrary, invited him to a feast, and clothed him in purple; but caused a sword, with the point downward, to be hung over his head by a silken twine; which, when he perceived, he could eat nothing of the delicates that were set before him.

The Stoics taught their philosophy under a porticus, to secure their scholars from the weather. Zeno was the chief of that sect.

Polygnotus, a famous painter, who drew the pictures of the Medes and Persians conquered by Miltiades, Themistocles, and other Athenian captains, on the walls of the portico, in their natural habits.

Pythagoras, of Samos, made the allusion of the Y, or Greek upsilon, to Vice and Virtue. One side of the letter being broad, characters Vice, to which the ascent is wide and easy; the other side represents Virtue, to which the passage is strait and difficult; and perhaps our Saviour might also allude to this, in those noted words of the evangelist, “The way to heaven,” etc.

Casaubon here notes, that, among all the Romans who were brought up to learning, few, besides the orators or lawyers, grew rich.

Orestes was son to Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. Agamemnon, at his return from the Trojan wars, was slain by Ægysthus, the adulterer of Clytemnestra. Orestes, to revenge his father's death, slew both Ægysthus and his mother; for which he was punished with madness by the Eumenides, or Furies, who continually haunted him.

The compliment, at the opening of the Pharsalia, has been thought sarcastic. It certainly sounds so in modern ears: if Nero could only attain empire by civil war, as the gods by that of the giants, then says the poet,

Socrates, whom the oracle of Delphos praised as the wisest man of his age, lived in the time of the Peloponnesian war. He, finding the uncertainty of natural philosophy, applied himself wholly to the moral. He was master to Xenophon and Plato, and to many of the Athenian young noblemen; amongst the rest to Alcibiades, the most lovely youth then living; afterwards a famous captain, whose life is written by Plutarch.

Pericles was tutor, or rather overseer, of the will of Clinias, father to Alcibiades. While Pericles lived, who was a wise man, and an excellent orator, as well as a great general, the Athenians had the better of the war.

That is, by death. When the judges would condemn a malefactor, they cast their votes into an urn; as according to the modern custom, a balloting-box. If the suffrages were marked with Θ, they signified the sentence of death to the offender; as being the first letter of Θανατος, which, in English, is death.

The poet would say, that such an ignorant young man, as he here describes, is fitter to be governed himself than to govern others. He therefore advises him to drink hellebore, which purges the brain.

The name of Vectidius is here used appellatively, to signify any rich covetous man, though perhaps there might be a man of that name then living. I have translated this passage paraphrastically, and loosely; and leave it for those to look on, who are not unlike the picture.

Pan, the god of shepherds, and Pales, the goddess presiding over rural affairs; whom Virgil invocates in the beginning of his second Georgic. I give the epithet of better to Ceres, because she first taught the use of corn for bread, as the poets tell us; men, in the first rude ages, feeding only on acorns, or mast, instead of bread.

The learned Holyday (who has made us amends for his bad poetry in this and the rest of these satires, with his excellent illustrations), here tells us, from good authority, that the number five does not allude to the five fingers of one man, but to five strong men, such as were skilful in the five robust exercises then in practice at Rome, and were performed in the circus, or public place ordained for them. These five he reckons up in this manner: 1. The cæstus, or whirlbats, described by Virgil in his fifth Æneid; and this was the most dangerous of all the rest. The 2d was the foot-race. The 3d, the discus, like the throwing a weighty ball, a sport now used in Cornwall, and other parts of England; we may see it daily practised in Red-Lion Fields. The 4th was the saltus or leaping; and the 5th, wrestling naked and besmeared with oil. They who practised in these five manly exercises were called Πενταθλοι.

Persius durst not have been so bold with Nero as I dare now; and therefore there is only an intimation of that in him which I publicly speak; I mean, of Nero's walking the streets by night in disguise, and committing all sorts of outrages, for which he was sometimes well beaten.

Look into thyself, and examine thy own conscience; there thou shalt find that, how wealthy soever thou appearest to the world, yet thou art but a beggar; because thou art destitute of all virtues, which are the riches of the soul. This also was a paradox of the Stoic school.

Progne was wife to Tereus, king of Thracia. Tereus fell in love with Philomela, sister to Progne, ravished her, and cut out her tongue; in revenge of which, Progne killed Itys, her own son by Tereus, and served him up at a feast, to be eaten by his father.

Thyestes and Atreus were brothers, both kings. Atreus, to revenge himself of his unnatural brother, killed the sons of Thyestes, and invited him to eat them.

By the childish robe is meant the Prœtexta, or first gowns which the Roman children of quality wore. These were welted with purple; and on those welts were fastened the bullæ, or little bells; which, when they came to the age of puberty, were hung up, and consecrated to the Lares, or household gods.

The first shields which the Roman youths wore were white, and without any impress or device on them, to show they had yet achieved nothing in the wars.

Socrates, by the oracle, was declared to be the wisest of mankind: he instructed many of the Athenian young noblemen in morality, and amongst the rest Alcibiades.

Astrologers divide the heaven into twelve parts, according to the number of the twelve signs of the zodiac. The sign, or constellation, which rises in the east at the birth of any man, is called the Ascendant: Persius therefore judges that Cornutus and he had the same or a like nativity.

Astrologers have an axiom, that whatsoever Saturn ties is loosed by Jupiter. They account Saturn to be a planet of a malevolent nature, and Jupiter of a propitious influence.

Zeno was the great master of the Stoic philosophy; and Cleanthes was second to him in reputation. Cornutus, who was master or tutor to Persius, was of the same school.

When a slave was made free, he had the privilege of a Roman born; which was to have a share in the donatives, or doles of bread, etc., which were distributed by the magistrates among the people.

The Roman people was distributed into several tribes. He who was made free was enrolled into some one of them; and thereupon enjoyed the common privileges of a Roman citizen.

The master who intended to enfranchise a slave carried him before the city prætor, and turned him round, using these words, “I will that this man be free.”

Slaves had only one name before their freedom; after it they were admitted to a prænomen like our christened names: so Dama is now called Marcus Dama.

At the proof of a testament, the magistrates were to subscribe their names, as allowing the legality of the will.

Slaves, when they were set free, had a cap given them, in sign of their liberty.

Brutus freed the Roman people from the tyranny of the Tarquins, and changed the form of the government into a glorious commonwealth.

The text of the Roman laws was written in red letters, which was called the Rubric; translated here, in more general words, “The letter of the law.”

The Stoics held this paradox, that any one vice, or notorious folly, which they called madness, hindered a man from being virtuous; that a man was of a piece, without a mixture, either wholly vicious, or good; one virtue or vice, according to them, including all the rest.

The prætor held a wand in his hand, with which he softly struck the slave on the head, when he declared him free.

This alludes to the play of Terence, called “The Eunuch;” which was excellently imitated of late in English, by Sir Charles Sedley. In the first scene of that comedy Phædria was introduced with his man, Pamphilus, discoursing whether he should leave his mistress Thais, or return to her, now that she had invited him.

He who sued for any office amongst the Romans was called a candidate, because he wore a white gown; and sometimes chalked it, to make it appear whiter. He rose early, and went to the levees of those who headed the people; saluted also the tribes severally, when they were gathered together to choose their magistrates; and distributed a largess amongst them, to engage them for their voices; much resembling our elections of Parliament-men.

The commentators are divided what Herod this was, whom our author mentions; whether Herod the Great, whose birthday might possibly be celebrated, after his death, by the Herodians, a sect amongst the Jews, who thought him their Messiah; or Herod Agrippa, living in the author's time and after it. The latter seems the more probable opinion.

The ancients had a superstition, contrary to ours, concerning egg-shells: they thought that if an egg-shell were cracked, or a hole bored in the bottom of it, they were subject to the power of sorcery. We as vainly break the bottom of an egg-shell, and cross it when we have eaten the egg, lest some hag should make use of it in bewitching us, or sailing over the sea in it, if it were whole. The rest of the priests of Isis, and her one-eyed or squinting priestess, is more largely treated in the Sixth Satire of Juvenal, where the superstitions of women are related.

All the studious, and particularly the poets, about the end of August, began to set themselves on work, refraining from writing during the heats of the summer. They wrote by night, and sat up the greatest part of it; for which reason the product of their studies was called their elucubrations, or nightly labours. They who had country-seats retired to them while they studied, as Persius did to his, which was near the port of the Moon in Etruria; and Bassus to his, which was in the country of the Sabines, nearer Rome.

This proves Cæsius Bassus to have been a lyric poet. It is said of him, that by an eruption of the flaming mountain Vesuvius, near which the greatest part of his fortune lay, he was burnt himself, together with all his writings.

I call it a drunken dream of Ennius; not that my author in this place gives me any encouragement for the epithet, but because Horace, and all who mention Ennius, say he was an excessive drinker of wine. In a dream, or vision, call you it which you please, he thought it was revealed to him, that the soul of Pythagoras was transmigrated into him; as Pythagoras before him believed that himself had been Euphorbus in the wars of Troy. Commentators differ in placing the order of this soul, and who had it first. I have here given it to the peacock; because it looks more according to the order of nature, that it should lodge in a creature of an inferior species, and so by gradation rise to the informing of a man. And Persius favours me, by saying, that Ennius was the fifth from the Pythagorean peacock.

Perhaps this is only a fine transition of the poet, to introduce the business of the satire; and not that any such accident had happened to one of the friends of Persius. But, however, this is the most poetical description of any in our author; and since he and Lucan were so great friends, I know not but Lucan might help him in two or three of these verses, which seem to be written in his style; certain it is, that besides this description of a shipwreck, and two lines more which are at the end of the second satire, our poet has written nothing elegantly. I will, therefore, transcribe both the passages, to justify my opinion. The following are the last verses, saving one, of the second satire—

The others are those in this present satire, which are sub joined—

The Latin is, Nunc et de cespite vivo, frange aliquid. Casaubon only opposes the cespes vivus, which, word for word, is the living turf, to the harvest, or annual income; I suppose the poet rather means, sell a piece of land already sown, and give the money of it to my friend, who has lost all by shipwreck; that is, do not stay till thou hast reaped, but help him immediately, as his wants require.

Holyday translates it a green table: the sense is the same; for the table was painted of the sea-colour, which the shipwrecked person carried on his back, expressing his losses, thereby to excite the charity of the spectators.

The bodies of the rich, before they were burnt, were embalmed with spices; or rather spices were put into the urn with the relics of the ashes. Our author here names cinnamum and cassia, which cassia was sophisticated with cherry-gum, and probably enough by the Jews, who adulterate all things which they sell. But whether the ancients were acquainted with the spices of the Molucca Islands, Ceylon, and other parts of the Indies, or whether their pepper and cinnamon, etc., were the same with ours, is another question. As for nutmegs and mace, it is plain that the Latin names for them are modern.

The Cæsar here mentioned is Caius Caligula, who affected to triumph over the Germans, whom he never conquered, as he did over the Britons; and accordingly sent letters, wrapt about with laurels, to the senate and the Empress Cæsonia, whom I here call queen; though I know that name was not used amongst the Romans; but the word empress would not stand in that verse, for which reason I adjourned it to another. The dust, which was to be swept away from the altars, was either the ashes which were left there after the last sacrifice for victory, or might perhaps mean the dust or ashes which were left on the altars since some former defeat of the Romans by the Germans; after which overthrow, the altars had been neglected.

Cæsonia, wife to Caius Caligula, who afterwards, in the reign of Claudius, was proposed, but ineffectually, to be married to him, after he had executed Messalina for adultery.

He means only such as were to pass for Germans in the triumph, large-bodied men, as they are still, whom the empress clothed new with coarse garments, for the greater ostentation of the victory.

A hundred pair of gladiators were beyond the purse of a private man to give; therefore this is only a threatening to his heir, that he could do what he pleased with his estate.

Why shouldst thou, who art an old fellow, hope to outlive me, and be my heir, who am much younger? He who was first in the course or race, delivered the torch, which he carried, to him who was second.

Who were famous for their lustiness, and being, as we call it, in good liking. They were set on a stall when they were exposed to sale, to show the good habit of their body; and made to play tricks before the buyers, to show their activity and strength.

Chrysippus, the Stoic, invented a kind of argument, consisting of more than three propositions, which is called sorites, or a heap. But as Chrysippus could never bring his propositions to a certain stint, so neither can a covetous man bring his craving desires to any certain measure of riches, beyond which he could not wish for any more.