The Satires of A. Persius Flaccus
The Roman poet Persius died at thirty-one, leaving behind a mere six hundred and fifty lines of verse. Those sparse lines cut like a blade through the moral rot of Nero's Rome. Written with furious precision, his satires target the hypocrisy of Roman society: the corrupt politicians, the greedy rich, the poets who trade flattery for patronage, the philosophers who talk of virtue yet live in debauchery. Persius was a Stoic, and his satire burns with righteous anger at the gap between what humans should be and what they have become. His language is dense, his metaphors startling, his tone uncompromising. This is not comfortable reading. It is a young man's manifesto, written in the shadow of empire, demanding to know why we pretend to be good when we are not.
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“Tecum habita, et noris quam sit tibi curta suppellex. Retire within thyself, and thou will discover how small a stock is there.””
— Persius
“Does your knowing a thing go so far for nothing unless another person knows that you know it?””
— Persius
“He conquers who endures.””
— Persius
“Learn whom God has ordered you to be, and in what part of human affairs you have been placed.””
— Persius
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Persius. The Satires of A. Persius Flaccus. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-satires-of-a-persius-flaccus-6f59961a-8539-45ae-8b23-69d8ca8b7618.Persius (n.d.). The Satires of A. Persius Flaccus. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-satires-of-a-persius-flaccus-6f59961a-8539-45ae-8b23-69d8ca8b7618Persius. The Satires of A. Persius Flaccus. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-satires-of-a-persius-flaccus-6f59961a-8539-45ae-8b23-69d8ca8b7618.
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