Note 1, 123 — A. PERSIUS FLACCUS (continued 2)

123. Iliade: Probably the Iliad of Labeo. Homer’s Iliad would be too extravagant.—audaci quicumque, etc.: The poet distinctly points to the mordant Old Attic Comedy as his model; yet there is little trace of direct imitation of the worthies whom he cites, and the interval of conception is abysmal.—adflate: Persius, like some other Roman poets, goes beyond reasonable bounds in the use of the Vocative as a predicate. G., 324, R. 1; A., 35, b. The Greeks were cautious, and in Vergil the Vocative can be detached and felt as such, but not here, nor in 3, 28.—Cratino: the oldest of the famous comic triumvirate: Eupolis atque Cratinus Aristophanesque poetae, Hor., Sat., 1, 4, 1. Cratinus was the Archilochus of the Attic stage, hence audax. See the famous characteristic in Aristophanes, Eq., 527.