With foam upon thy lips and sparkling eyes, Thou say'st, and dost, in such outrageous wise, That mad Orestes, if he saw the show,

*

Would swear thou wert the madder of the two.

* Note XII.

NOTES

ON

TRANSLATIONS FROM PERSIUS.

SATIRE III.

Note I.

And parchment, with the smoother side display'd.-P. 231. 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 stile, like that we use in our-vellum table-books, as more easy.

Note II.

A fuming pan thy Lares to appease.-P. 232.

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.

Note III.

Drawn from the root of some old Tuscan tree.-P. 232.

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

Note IV.

Who, clad in purple, can'st thy censor greet.-P. 232.

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 hand. See more of this in Pompey's Life, written by Plutarch.

Note V.

Sicilian tortures, and the brazen bull.-P. 233.

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 enclosed in it, would render the sound of a bull's roaring, caused the workman to make the first experiment,-docuitque suum mugire juvencum.

Note VI.

The wretch, who, sitting at his plenteous board,

Look'd up, and view'd on high the pointed sword.-P. 233. 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.

Note VII.

Thou in the Stoic-porch, severely bred.-P. 233.

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

Note VIII.

Where on the walls, by Polygnotus' hand,

The conquer'd Medians in trunk-breeches stand.-P. 233.

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.

Note IX.

And where the Samian Y directs thy steps to run

To Virtue's narrow steep, and broad-way Vice to shun.

P. 234.

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," &c.

Note X.

Fat fees from the defended Umbrian draws.-P. 235. Casaubon here notes, that, among all the Romans who were brought up to learning, few, besides the orators or lawyers, grew rich.

Note XI.

His heels stretch'd out, and pointing to the gate.

P. 237. The Romans were buried without the city; for which reason, the poet says, that the dead man's heels were stretched out towards the gate.

Note XII.

Mad Orestes.-P. 238.

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.

VOL. XIII.

THE

FOURTH SATIRE

OF

PERSIUS.

THE ARGUMENT.

Our author, living in the time of Nero, was contemporary and friend to the noble poet Lucan. Both of them were sufficiently sensible, with all good men, how unskilfully he managed the commonwealth; and perhaps might guess at his future tyranny, by some passages, during the latter part of his first five years; though he broke not out into his great excesses, while he was restrained by the counsels and authority of Seneca. Lucan has not spared him in the poem of his Pharsalia; for his very compliment looked asquint, as well as Nero.* Persius has been bolder, but with caution likewise. For here, in the person of young Alcibiades, he arraigns his ambition of meddling with state affairs, without judgment or experience. It is probable, that he makes Seneca, in this satire, sustain the part of Socrates, under a borrowed name; and, withal, discovers some secret vices of Nero, concerning his lust, his drunkenness, and his effeminacy, which had not yet arrived to public notice. He also reprehends the flattery of his courtiers, who endeavoured to make all his vices pass for virtues. Covetousness was undoubtedly none of his faults; but it is here described as a veil cast over the true meaning of the poet, which was to satirize his prodi

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,

Scelera ipsa nefasque

Hac mercede placent.