_Our author, living in the time of Nero, was contemporary and friend to the noble poet Lucan. Both of them were sufficiently sensible, with all good men, how unskilfully he managed the commonwealth; and perhaps might guess at his future tyranny, by some passages, during the latter part of his first five years; though he broke not out into his great excesses, while he was restrained by the counsels and authority of Seneca. Lucan has not spared him in the poem of his Pharsalia; for his very compliment looked asquint, as well as Nero.[219] Persius has been bolder, but with caution likewise. For here, in the person of young Alcibiades, he arraigns his ambition of meddling with state-affairs without judgment, or experience. It is probable, that he makes Seneca, in this satire, sustain the part of Socrates, under a borrowed name; and, withal, discovers some secret vices of Nero, concerning his lust, his drunkenness, find his effeminacy, which had not yet arrived to public notice. He also reprehends the flattery of his courtiers, who endeavoured to make all his vices pass for virtues. Covetousness was undoubtedly none of his faults; but it is here described as a veil cast over the true meaning of the poet, which was to satirize his prodigality and voluptuousness; to which he makes a transition. I find no instance in history of that emperor's being a Pathic, though Persius seems to brand him with it. From the two dialogues of Plato, both called "Alcibiades," the poet took the arguments of the second and third satires; but he inverted the order of them, for the third satire is taken from the first of those dialogues._ _The commentators before Casaubon were ignorant of our author's secret meaning; and thought he had only written against young noblemen in general, who were too forward in aspiring to public magistracy; but this excellent scholiast has unravelled the whole mystery, and made it apparent, that the sting of the satire was particularly aimed at Nero._