Part 4

He must have been therefore nearly forty years old at this time, as he lived to be eighty.

The seventh of Juvenal's Satires.

This Paris does not appear to have been the favourite of Nero, who was put to death by that prince [see NERO, c. liv.], but another person of the same name, who was patronised by the emperor Domitian. The name of the poet joined with him is not known. Salmatius thinks it was Statius Pompilius, who sold to Paris, the actor, the play of Agave;

Esurit, intactam Paridi nisi vendat Agaven.--Juv. Sat. vii. 87.

Sulpicius Camerinus had been proconsul in Africa; Bareas Soranus in Asia. Tacit. Annal. xiii. 52; xvi. 23. Both of them are said to have been corrupt in their administration; and the satirist introduces their names as examples of the rich and noble, whose influence was less than that of favourite actors, or whose avarice prevented them from becoming the patrons of poets.

The "Pelopea," was a tragedy founded on the story of the daughter of Thyestes; the "Philomela," a tragedy on the fate of Itys, whose remains were served to his father at a banquet by Philomela and her sister Progne.

This was in the time of Adrian. Juvenal, who wrote first in the reigns of Domitian and Trajan, composed his last Satire but one in the third year of Adrian, A.U.C. 872.

Syene is meant, the frontier station of the imperial troops in that quarter of the world.

A.U.C. 786, A.D. 34.

A.U.C. 814, A.D. 62.

Persius was one of the few men of rank and affluence among the Romans, who acquired distinction as writers; the greater part of them having been freedmen, as appears not only from these lives of the poets, but from our author's notices of the grammarians and rhetoricians. A Caius Persius is mentioned with distinction by Livy in the second Punic war, Hist. xxvi. 39; and another of the same name by Cicero, de Orat. ii. 6, and by Pliny; but whether the poet was descended from either of them, we have no means of ascertaining.

Persius addressed his fifth satire to Annaeus Cornutus. He was a native of Leptis, in Africa, and lived at Rome in the time of Nero, by whom he was banished.

Caesius Bassus, a lyric poet, flourished during the reigns of Nero and Galba. Persius dedicated his sixth Satire to him.

"Numanus." It should be Servilius Nonianus, who is mentioned by Pliny, xxviii. 2, and xxxvii. 6.

Commentators are not agreed about these sums, the text varying both in the manuscripts and editions.

See Dr. Thomson's remarks on Persius, before, p. 398.

There is no appearance of any want of finish in the sixth Satire of Persius, as it has come down to us; but it has been conjectured that it was followed by another, which was left imperfect.

There were two Arrias, mother and daughter, Tacit. Annal. xvi. 34. 3.

Persius died about nine days before he completed his twenty-ninth year.

Venusium stood on the confines of the Apulian, Lucanian, and Samnite territories.

Sequor hunc, Lucanus an Appulus anceps; Nam Venusinus arat finem sub utrumque colonus. Hor Sat. xi. 1. 34. Sat. i. 6. 45.

Horace mentions his being in this battle, and does not scruple to admit that he made rather a precipitate retreat, "relicta non bene parmula."--Ode xi. 7-9.

See Ode xi. 7. 1.

The editors of Suetonius give different versions of this epigram. It seems to allude to some passing occurrence, and in its present form the sense is to this effect: "If I love you not, Horace, to my very heart's core, may you see the priest of the college of Titus leaner than his mule."

Probably the Septimius to whom Horace addressed the ode beginning

Septimi, Gades aditure mecum.--Ode xl. b. i.

See AUGUSTUS, c. xxi.; and Horace, Ode iv, 4.

See Epist. i. iv. xv.