Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/34

 Heu steriles veri, quibus una Quiritem, Vertigo facit!(v. 75.)

Not one word is there in Persius, from beginning to end, that recognises the change that had passed over public life in Rome, or of the results of that change on the morals and intellects of the time. 



It has been the fashion to characterise Persius as obscure, but the epithet is hardly deserved. He is undoubtedly difficult; his mode of expressing himself is often peculiar and fantastic. There is a certain preciosity in his choice of phrases; he is sometimes crabbed and tortuous, and in his desire for compression he occasionally, especially in his many repetitions of Horatian ideas, seeks to obtain extra force by blending two ideas into one without giving full expression to either. He is often elliptical; his dialogue is abrupt and hard to follow. He is certainly difficult as a whole, and his style is one which needs to be wrestled with; but with a little careful attention the sequence of his thought can always be discovered, and, though individual passages may cause embarrassment, he cannot as a whole be justly charged with obscurity. His contemporaries did not find him obscure. The Biography tells us that no sooner was the book xxx