From Thomas Farnaby’s Persius, 1612 The poem, prefixed to the section of Juvenal, ed. Farnaby (1612) devoted to Persius, is painfully obscure. Its last lines are glossed in a note appended to the Errata in Farnaby’s Seneca: ‘In the four-line poem to the commentator there is an allusion to the vulgar proverb “if you don’t want to be understood, you ought to be ignored”, which many people attribute to Ambrose, some to Tertullian, and others to Jerome’ (p. 165). Persius is a notoriously obscure Latin satirist. Translation: ‘Persius comes out with your Juvenal, Farnaby, and is routed out from his affected darkness of style. Although he was once neglected, even the blessed Jerome himself [lit. ‘the man born at Strido, who was a saint in name’] might (now) read him and understand.’

1 Iuvenale tuo may echo the intimacy of Martial’s Iuvenale meo (7.24; Donaldson, privately).

1 Persius Aulus Persius Flaccus (ad 34–62) wrote six satires in a highly concentrated style, which dwell on inner freedom. He had a significant influence on English satirists of the 1590s.

4 Stridone satus St Jerome (c. 342–420) was born at Strido (probably modern Strigau), and is said to have burned Persius’s satires because of their obscurity.