Cornute, Dulcis Amice: Stoic Feelings and Aesthetic Pleasure

Cornute, Dulcis Amice: Stoic Feelings and Aesthetic Pleasure

In a departure from the predominant view of Persius’ Satires as “anti-aesthetic” or “anhedonic” (Henderson 1991; Bartsch 2015), this paper proposes a new model for reading the Satires in terms of affective engagement and aesthetic appreciation. Studies of Persius often begin with the assumption that the Satires offer no pleasure at all (e.g. Gowers 1993; cf. Freudenburg 2001). However, the absence of honey-sweet poetics does not necessitate an absence of artistic appreciation or feeling. Contrary to traditional notions of Stoics as cold, even inhumane figures, sages still experience “good feelings” (eupatheiai) like joy and pleasurable impulses like eros (Graver 2007). Building on previous re-evaluations of Stoic feelings, I argue that Persius offers the Satires to his teacher Cornutus as an aesthetic and philosophical expression of erotic love. Persius’ disjointed and disgusting verses become a sensory and even pleasurable performance of Stoic virtue for his beloved Cornutus.

My paper focuses on Persius’ address to Cornutus in Satire 5 as evidence of their erotodidactic Stoic relationship. Based on the old Stoics’ philosophical treatments of eros and Cornutus’ discussion of eros in his pedagogical text, the Epidrome, I define Stoic erotodidaxis as a relationship of mutually consensual eros founded on both physical and intellectual attraction (DL 7.129; Gaca 2003). Addressed to an unnamed pais, the Epidrome supports early Stoic distinctions between rational and irrational eros as well as the need for pederastic instruction (Epidr. 7.2; 23.19-22; 34.17). Persius upholds this understanding of eros with his use of marital and pederastic language: after assuming the toga uirilis, a vulnerable transition period during which adolescent boys were considered most attractive, young Persius is led like a Roman bride (deducere) into Cornutus’ embrace for protection and instruction (Sat. 5.30-37; Richlin 2011). The notion of a rational Stoic eros contradicts scholarship which seeks to explain away the erotic dimensions of Persius and Cornutus' relationship (e.g. Hooley 1997; cf. Richlin 2015). The difference between the negatively sexualized earholes of contemporary poetasters (auriculae, 1.22) and the didactic eros of Cornutus, who “sows young men’s cleansed ears (purgatas aures) with the fruit of Cleanthes” (5.63-64), is not sex but logos.

Recovering the erotic aspects of Persius’ relationship with Cornutus allows us to read the Satires as both a demonstration of the proficiens’ progress and a defense of the aesthetic and ethical value of sensory experiences from sex to saliva. Cornutus is cast as erastes, philosophical judge, and literary critic: he is invited to shake, tap, and press (excutere, pulsare, premere) noisome metaphors illustrating Persius’ erotic devotion and knowledge of Stoic ethics (5.21-25). Greed is “Mercury’s saliva,” irrational lovers gnaw bloody fingernails, and religious relics vomit greasy smoke (5.112; 5.162-163; 5.181). These are the figures Persius offers to prove “how much of my soul is yours, Cornutus” (5.22-23), asking his teacher to distinguish (dinoscere) not only between rational and irrational eros, but also between rational and irrational aesthetic pleasure. Far from being “anti-aesthetic,” the Satires represent a nuanced range of Stoic feelings through Persius’ combination of erotic, philosophical, and aesthetic discourse.