PERSIUS, SATIRE I
our sires. See how we have learnt to round off our verses with 'Berecynthian Attis'; or 'the dolphin which was cleaving the sky-blue Nereus'; or how 'we filched a rib off from the lengthy Apennines'!"[1]
P. "O shade of Virgil! What is this but frothy inflated stuff, like an old bough smothered under its bloated bark! Now give me something of the languishing kind; something that should be recited with a gentle bending of the neck."
F. "'They filled their savage horns with Mimallonean boomings'; 'the Bassarid ready to tear off the head of the prancing calf'; or, 'the Maenad, about to rein the lynx with ivy-trails, redoubles the Evian shout: responsive Echo gives back the cry!'"[2]
P. "What? Would such things be written if one drop of our fathers' manhood were still alive in our veins? Your Maenad and your Attis are just marrowless drivel, floating and spluttering on the lips, on the top of the spittle: no banging of the desk here, no biting of nails to the quick!"[3]
107F. "But why rasp people's tender ears with biting truths? Take heed, I beseech you, that the doorsteps of your great friends do not grow cool towards you: don't you hear the snarl of a dog?"
P. "Well, well, have your way; I will paint everything white henceforth! Bravo! Bravo! you shall all be paragons of creation! Will that please you?
- ↑ These lines (93-5), admiringly quoted by the Friend, seem to be invented or quoted to show the absurdities of modern poetic diction.
- ↑ These four lines of furious bombast are said by the Scholiast, apparently without any authority, to have formed part of a poem by Nero. They are ridiculed both for their grandiloquence in rhythm and for their crudities in expression. Line 99 is imitated from Catull. lxii. 264. Line 100 is from Eur. Bacch. 743.
- ↑ This line is obviously imitated from Hor. Sat. i. x. 70.
