Persius' Satires have suffered critical neglect in comparison with Horace and Juvenal in part, as B. concedes, due to their difficult Latin and arguably distasteful assault on the senses. B.'s book, however, not only provides a much needed contribution to the study of Persius' Satires, but one that is as thought-provoking and exciting as it is highly accessible. The undertaking prioritises Persius' use of metaphor to explore the ways in which their resultant topoi define Persius' Stoic programme. These topoi, specifically literary reception as a form of cannibalism, the curative force of good poetics, metaphor as medicine, and a criticism of the eroticised Platonic model of philosophy, are presented as a series of case studies with select analysis of satires. Although acknowledgement of Persius' bewildering use of metaphor (most obviously the acris iunctura, 5.14) is not new, B.'s work is novel for placing sustained emphasis on Persius' usage and originality to argue that it constitutes the ‘driving force’ of and ‘framework’ for his Satires. (p. 10) Moreover, B.'s careful and detailed attention to the cultural and historical significance of Persius' imagery offers a fresh and welcome elucidation of details that have previously baffled (and repulsed) students of Persius (e.g. the poet's orgasmic eye, Sat. 1.15–23; see p. 52).
The book is divided into two parts. The first examines Persius' use of metaphor; the second confronts the contradictions arising from this usage.
Chapter 1 argues that Persius cherry-picks and develops analogies between text and bodies taken from Horace's programmatic Ars poetica to articulate his own satiric programme vis-à-vis the versifiers of his day (p. 17). The chapter is rewarding for B.'s close intertextual consideration and illuminating discussion of alimentary and digestive metaphors. B. argues that Persius fastens onto Horace's ruminations on literary propriety expressed figuratively, by way of metaphorical violence to the human body, and literally, in Horace's dictate that certain subject matter, particularly mutilation or consumption of the human body (as illustrated in the Thyestes myth), has no place in tragedy (A.P. 1–8, 89–92, 185–7; Sat. 1.4 and 2.8) (pp. 17–25). B. convincingly illustrates that Persius pushes the metapoetic analogy far, and far from Horace: literary tradition is, in Persius' metapoetic world, figured as a consumable body swallowed down and vomited up by cannibalistic poets to their flesh-eating audiences (Sat. 5) (pp. 29–30). Certainly, this makes for a more disturbing realisation of the alimentary metaphor as a means of critiquing poetic exchange (cf. Hor. A.P. 422–30) (see p. 54). Exploiting the analogical activities of reading and digesting, B. illustrates that Persius' decoctius vegetarian satiric fare is presented as the salubrious alternative to his contemporaries' meaty gastro-poetic and dyspeptic inducing excess (Sat. 1). B. goes some way to head off the contradiction between Persius' criticism of rich foods and his generic choice, by placing emphasis on his decoctius satire's digestible and appropriately nourishing properties (p. 62); however, the contradiction still lingers given the porcine images (e.g. Sat. 1.53–7) that constitute the Satires' substance.
Chapter 2 offers an interesting examination of the curative properties of Persius' Satires, particularly in its detailed discussion of the medical implications of the satires as aliquid decoctius (pp. 70–4, with appendix). B. argues that Persius' Satires are set up ‘as a new sort of poetry, one that radically breaks with the ancient notion that verse provides a pleasurable medium for painful truths’ (p. 84). B. pays careful attention to the Platonic analogy of medicine and cookery with which Persius' departure is aligned (Plat. Gorg. 465c). Rather than please, B. illustrates that the Satires' abrasive imagery performs, as it were – and in the manner of Cornutus' Stoicism in Satire 5.15–16 – cauterising surgery, figuratively scraping away our diseased morals (p. 78). The harsh but nourishing beets of Satire 3, an apt symbol for Persius' vegetarian fare, likewise prove an appropriate metaphor for the collection's purgative function (p. 95).
Satire 4 is notorious for both its uncompromising content and difficult structure and arrangement (see Hooley, The Knotted Thong: Structures of Mimesis in Persius [1997], p. 126). Nevertheless, in Chapter 3 B. offers a perceptive and coherent reading of this intractable satire that also places it within the broader framework of Persius' Stoic project. Pressing the satire's acknowledged appropriation of pseudo-Plato's Alcibiades 1 (e.g. C.S. Dessen, The Satires of Persius. Iunctura Callidus Acri [1996]), B. convincingly argues that Persius offers a revisionary account of that text's positive depiction of the Socratic pedagogic technique that amplifies potential criticism of Socrates in Plato's Symposium (219c–d) and Xenophon's Memorabilia. Persius' Alcibiades is found to manifest the failure of the Platonic Socrates' eroticised pedagogy. This failure, B. argues, is explicitly contrasted with Cornutus' successful guidance of Persius in the following Satire 5, which B. reads as a positive counterpart and direct challenge to the model of Socrates and Alcibiades. B. concludes, albeit not unsurprisingly, that philosophical introspection finds a parallel in Persius' attitude to his readership (vel nemo vel duo, Sat. 1.3) (p. 125).
In the first chapter of the second part of the book (Chapter 4), B. explores the tension between Persius' cauterising Stoic programme and use of metaphor. Metaphors were, of course, deemed at best a distraction from moral instruction, but at worst capable of misguiding, owing to their pleasurable qualities (for which see Arist. Rhet. 3.2.11–13). B. suggests that Persius reconciles this tension by innovating a new kind of Stoic poetics, which presses figural language to the service of his Stoic programme that scrapes, not pleases, its audience (pp. 133, 167). This end is encapsulated in Persius' programmatic insistence on acris iunctura which (as is well observed but here B.'s survey usefully – especially for new students of Persius – revisits old ground) also functions as an intertextual negation of Lucretius' honeyed cup (DRN 4.11–17; see e.g. K. Freudenburg Satires of Rome: Threatening Poses from Lucilius to Juvenal [2001], p. 182) and Horace's crustula (Sat. 1.1.25), while modifying Horace's callida iunctura (see Hooley [1997], pp. 73–4).
In Chapter 5 B. asks whether and how Persius' negative sensory bombardment intends to bring about any philosophical result. Can we dismiss the possibility of an anti-Perse chez Perse, when Persius' negative imagery threatens to overwhelm his Stoic intent (p. 180)? B. rightly dismisses the possibility of extrapolating Persius' Stoic meaning from the Satires as the unpleasant ‘before’ designed to motivate our revised ‘after’. This would not confront, as Bramble (Persius and the Programmatic Satire [1974]) has previously illustrated of Satire 1, the instability of Persius' metaphors. B., however, elaborates and presses Bramble's observations beyond Satire 1. As B. sees it, metaphorical instability is an important part of the Stoic programme's apotreptic function. Persius' philosophical approach is found to parallel Lucretius (minus his honeyed cup), whose Epicurean proficientes, like Persius' Stoic proficientes, are to become desensitised and withdraw from the sensory world (pp. 208–9).
B.'s arguments are clearly expressed and the book is well produced. Although not an exhaustive study, it is nevertheless a significant and valuable contribution to Persius scholarship in which there is still much to be done (e.g. work on persona). Its clarity and engaging style revitalise and make accessible – hopefully to new audiences as well as seasoned readers of Persius – an unwieldy poet.
