Castigat ridendo moris’? Persius’ view from his satires to the entire Roman Principate in the first century of the Christian era

Abstract

One of the biggest, if not the main objective of a satire was to attack the evils of a society from this literary tool. A didactic-moralizing element, the satirical genre would have arisen, or would be motivated, from the observations of the vices, whether moral and/or social, or even better, from the criticism of behaviors considered distorted, deviant from what is considered as an ideal standard of conduct. Its main purpose: what it endorses, as well as what it criticizes of the Roman society of the first century of the Christian era, aiming to standardize a behavior for the citizen inhabitant of Rome, in the same way as for all the inhabitants of the Empire. Here, we make use of the verses written by a distinguished author who lived in the first century of the Christian era: it is Aulus Persius Flaccus, known only as Persius.