THE FUNCTION OF PERSIUS' CHOLIAMBICS

BY

EDWARD CHARLES WITKE

Persius' choliambics have hitherto been studied chiefly for their bearing on the problems of Ennius' proem to his Annales. 11) However, these fourteen lines merit close study for other reasons, for in them Persius establishes his literary persona, which he care- fully preserves throughout his book. An understanding of the choliambics' function is necessary before a critical evaluation of their significance for Ennius can be attempted. The choliambics are regarded by the latest editor of Persius 2) as a prologue. Some however have printed them as an epilogue. 3) MSS A and B (independent copies of minuscule [?] Alpha, now lost) are the only ones which put the choliambics after the six satires. The most important MS, P, omits them. That they con- stitute a prologue can be seen from the references to inspiration from the Muses, and from the polemical tone displayed in the latter part. One must not stress it, but the reference to Ennius is balanced by one at the beginning of the last satire. 4) This prologue exhibits in brief and as it were in a simplified manner the techniques Per- sius uses throughout his work: understatement, antithesis, com- 1) The most recent discussion is Hans Rudolf Steiner, Der Traum in derAeneis (Bem, 1952 ) , 9,n. 4. The best modern discussion of Ennius' proem is J. H. Waszink, The Proem of the Annales of Ennius, Mnemosyne, S. IV, Vol. III, 1950, 215-240, with excellent bibliography. 2) W. V. Clausen (Oxford, 1956). 3) E.g., Bucheler, Owen; more recently, Nino Scivoletto (Florence, 1956), who largely follows Marmorale (see n. 4 infra). 4) For other aspects of the prologue (authenticity, unity, Cornutus' role) see Ulrich Knoche, Die rdmische Satire2 (Göttingen, 1957), 81. A useful but basically inconclusive treatment of the choliambics is Enzo V. Marmorale, Persio (Florence, 1942), 371 -390. Francois Villeneuve, Essai -sur Perse (Paris, 1918), remains essential; 368-372, on style in the prologue, are especially relevant. 154 pression to the point of obscurity, and figurative usages which most surprise the reader because of their novelty or incongruity. The first three lines reveal the position of the speaker and his attitude: he considers himself a poet, but he cannot recall expe- riences traditionally associated with composing poetry. Parti- cularly interesting is his reference to Ennius, because it is specifi- cally a Latin tradition, just as Persius' genre of satire is a Latin genre. The scholiast ad versum tells us that Persius refers to Ennius in 2, and it has never been seriously questioned. However it has not been realized that the poet shows here a very unusual and untra- ditional detachment from his subject. The understated memini, in its assumption that one could forget such a vision as Ennius' of Homer, is highly ironic. In keeping with this, Persius goes so far as to allude to august Hippokrene as fons caballinus. I) The scholiast ad versum thought it necessary to attempt an explanation of Persius' unusual choice of terms: 'caballino autem dicit, non equino, quod satirae humiliora conveniant.' This is as untrue as saying he uses Parnassus in the next line because the meter does not allow Helicon. 2) Caballinus is distinctly a low word; Persius is the only poet who uses it. It is found only in Pliny the Elder and in four medical writers of the fourth century. All, including Pliny, also use equinus. 8) Such irreverence is surprising in a proem, until one clears up the obscurity by asking what the Muses and their topography signified for a reader contemporary with Persius. The remaining eleven lines answer this query. If the first five and one-half lines function as a repudiation of past literary tradition as continued by Persius' contemporaries, and as the poet's assertion of his independence of them, the last seven lines (after the conventional claim to be vates) particularize, and by implication characterize the real source of poetry in the poet's times: ventey and nummus, emptiness of stomach and pocket. The first teaches men to grind out poetry just as it teaches parrots and magpies to ape human speech. But further, dolosi sbes nummi i ) Cf. Juv. III. u8, 'Gorgonei delapsa est pinna caballi', where c. punc- tures an epic flight. 2) Cf. Skutsch, P.-W. V, 2, 2604. 3) ThLL; Bertil Axelson, Unpoetische W6yter (Lund, 1945), discusses neither caballus nor caballinus.