thumb|Persius
Aulus Persius Flaccus (; 4 December 3424 November 62 AD) was a Roman poet and satirist of Etruscan origin. In his works, poems and satire, he shows a Stoic wisdom and a strong criticism for what he considered to be the stylistic abuses of his poetic contemporaries. His works, which became very popular in the Middle Ages, were published after his death by his friend and mentor, the Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Cornutus.
Life
According to the Life contained in the manuscripts, Persius was born into an equestrian family at Volterra (Volaterrae, in Latin), a small Etruscan city in the province of Pisa, of good stock on both parents' side. When he was six years old he lost his father; his stepfather died a few years later. At the age of twelve Persius came to Rome, where he was taught by Remmius Palaemon and the rhetor Verginius Flavus. During the next four years he developed friendships with the Stoic Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, the lyric poet Caesius Bassus and the poet Lucan. Lucan would become a generous admirer of all Persius wrote. He also became close friends with Thrasea Paetus, the husband of Arria, a relative of Persius's; over the next ten years Persius and Thrasea Paetus shared many travels together. Later, he met Seneca, but was not impressed by his genius.
In his boyhood, Persius wrote a tragedy dealing with an episode in Roman history, and another work, probably on travel (although this would have been before the travels with Thrasea Paetus). Reading the satires of Lucilius made Persius want to write like him, and he set to work on a book of his own satires. But he wrote seldom and slowly; a premature death (uitio stomachi) prevented him from completing the book. He has been described as having "a gentle disposition, girlish modesty and personal beauty", and is said to have lived a life of exemplary devotion towards his mother Fulvia Sisennia, his sister and his aunt. To his mother and sister he left his considerable fortune. Cornutus suppressed all his work except the satires, to which he made some slight alterations before handing it over to Bassus for editing. It proved an immediate success.
Work
thumb|17th-century Scottish gravestone with a quote from Persius: Vive memor lethi fugit hora, "Live mindful of death, for time flies."
The chief interest of Persius's work lies in its relation to Roman satire in its interpretation of Roman Stoicism, and in its use of the Latin tongue. The influence of Horace on Persius can, in spite of the silence of the Life, hardly have been less than that of Lucilius. Not only characters, as noted above, but whole phrases, thoughts and situations come directly from him. The resemblance only emphasizes the difference between the caricaturist of Stoicism and its preacher. Persius strikes the highest note that Roman satire reached; in earnestness and moral purpose he rises far superior to the political rancour or good-natured persiflage of his predecessors and the rhetorical indignation of Juvenal. From him we learn how that philosophy could work on minds that still preserved the depth and purity of the old Roman gravitas. Some of the parallel passages in the works of Persius and Seneca are very close, and cannot be explained by assuming the use of a common source. Like Seneca, Persius censures the style of the day, and imitates it. Indeed, in some of its worst failings, straining of expression, excess of detail, exaggeration, he outbids Seneca, whilst the obscurity, which makes his little book of not seven hundred lines so difficult to read and is in no way due to great depth of thought, compares poorly with the terse clearness of the Epistolae morales. A curious contrast to this tendency is presented by his free use of "popular" words. As of Plato, so of Persius, we hear that he emulated Sophron; the authority is a late one (the Byzantine Lydus, De mag. I.41), but we can at least recognize in the scene that opens Sat. 3 kinship with such work as Theocritus' Adoniazusae and the Mimes of Herodas.