In this short book, Bartsch explores an understudied poet and satirist who lived in Rome during the time of Nero, a man named Persius who was friends with Lucan and a member of Seneca the
Younger’s entourage. Most of the satirists who lived in Rome then tended to poke fun at the great gravitas of the Stoics, but not Persius. Unique among his literary peers, he, too, wrote
satires that lampooned the State and social conventions of the day, yet he wrote from a Stoic point of view, translating, as Bartsch argues, philosophy into poetry and humor.
