Author: PERSIUS
Biography:
PERSIUS (34-62 CE: OCD)
The Roman satirist Aulus Persius Flaccus is well known and well documented enough that only the briefest of headnotes is necessary for him. He was high-born and wealthy. He left only six satires, distinctive and difficult in style; in the English tradition of translation they are often likened to those of Juvenal and differentiated from the gentler mode of Horace (qq.v.). Of the seven translators represented here, five have headnotes of their own as original poets: William Drummond, William Gifford, Francis Howes, Martin Madan, and Lawrence Reynolds, qq.v. Two do not, but of those one, Thomas Brewster (1705-64), first published his translation before 1770. There remains Charlton Byam Wollaston (1765-1840), the second child of Charlton Wollaston, physician to the King, and his wife Phillis Byam of Antigua. He was baptised at St. George’s, Hanover Square, London, on 16 Feb. 1765-- a posthumous child, his father having died in 1764. His mother remarried and had two more children with her second husband James Frampton (d 1784) of Moreton, Dorset, a village near Dorchester. Wollaston was educated at Winchester School and at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he won the Browne Medal for a Latin ode (BA 1786, MA 1789), and then at Lincoln’s Inn. He was called to the bar in 1791 and served as Recorder of Dorset 1806-36, and as a JP. From 1799 he was the tenant of Wollaston House, Dorchester, where he lived unmarried with his mother and his step-brother James Frampton, High Sheriff of Dorset. Both brothers were involved in the arrest, prosecution, and transportation of the Tolpuddle Martyrs in 1834. Wollaston died at Dorchester on 21 Feb. 1840 and was buried in the Frampton vault at Moreton. His translation of the Epodes of Horaceappeared in 1841. (ODC 1 Mar. 2025; Harvey; ancestry.com 1 Mar. 2025; findmypast.com 1 Mar. 2025; Dorset County Chronicle 5 Mar. 1840; Richard Smith, “A History of Wollaston House,” opc.dorset.org; ACAD) HJ
Other Names:
- Aulus Persius Flaccus