Persius, on the other hand, was the philosophic satirist, whose
devotion to Stoicism caused him to see in it a panacea for all the
evils which Nero brought on the empire. The shortness of his life, his
studious tastes, and his exceptional moral purity all contributed to
keep him ignorant of that world of evil which, as Professor Sellar has
pithily remarked, it is the business of the satirist to know. Hence he
is purely a philosophic or didactic satirist. Only one of his poems,
the first, fulfils the special end of satire by representing any phase
whatever of the life of his time, and pointing its moral.
Finally, Martial exchanged the epic tirade for the epigram as the
vehicle of his satire, and handled this lighter missile with
unsurpassed brilliance and _verve_. Despite his sycophancy and his
fulsome flattery of prospective benefactors, he displays more of the
sober moderation and sane common-sense of Horace than either of his
contemporaries. There are few better satirists of social and literary
pretenders either in ancient or modern times. No ancient has more
vividly painted the manners of antiquity. If Juvenal enforces the
lesson of that time, and has penetrated more deeply into the heart of
society, Martial has sketched its external aspect with a much fairer
pencil, and from a much more intimate contact with it.
In the first and second centuries of our era two other forms of satire
took their rise, viz.:--the Milesian or "Satiric Tale" of Petronius and
Apuleius, and the "Satiric Dialogue" of Lucian.
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