Integer Ipse? Self-Knowledge and Self-Representation in Persius Satires 4

Abstract

The subject of both dialogue and satire is the foundation of criticism: Quofretus (3) does Alcibiades administer the state? Both works urge Alcibiades to disavow the superficial criticism of the crowd and the superficial beauty of his own body and to direct his gaze inward: only here is true criticism and true self-knowledge to be found. This contrast between public and private criticism is a familiar topic in Persius' satires.2 For Persius, as for Horace before him, genres of criticism are defined in terms simultaneously literary and ethical. The subject of this self-conscious satire, then, is the translation of the Socratic Know yourself into a different genre. With what voice are you to know yourself in satire? Persius' literary landscape is dominated by Roman Callimacheanism, his primary target, and by Horace. In the violence of his attacks on the effeminate followers of Callimachus and in his ugly distortion of the Horatian aesthetic Persius diverges from his predecessor and rejects the balance Horace had struck between refinement and emasculation in his satires. Persius and Horace have characteristic styles and concerns and one may generalize about the differences between them. In addition each of Persius' satires has a more specific relationship, pointed by verbal reminiscence, with one or more poems of Horace. For Satires 4 the Horatian models are Satires 2.1 and Epistles 1.16 and 2.2. After some introductory remarks on the attribution of lines to speakers in Persius Satires 4, I turn in the second part of the article to Horace Satires 2.1 and the critical language with which Horace constructs his aesthetic. As in other programmatic satires, his representation of Lucilius, whatever its relevance for reading Lucilius' poetry and its reception,3 is a vehicle of Horace's self-representation. This section