Note v. 127 — A. PERSIUS FLACCUS (continued 3)

127. si increpuit: The slave loiters, the master scolds.—‘cessas nugator:’ Much more effective in the mouth of the master than as an apodosis to si increpuit, as Hermann has it, and Jahn (1868); though Schlüter’s remark, verba ‘cessas nugator?’ dominum, non philosophum decent, does not amount to much, when we consider that the philosopher is Persius himself. Nugator is used here of wasting time; but the use of nugari and its forms, which were often addressed to slaves, is wider, like the English ‘fool.’ So in Petron., 52, a boy lets a cup fall, and Trimalchio cries, ne sis nugax. With cessas comp. Hor., Ep., 2, 2, 14: semel hic cessavit. ‘What do you mean by this loitering, you dawdler, you?’—servitium acre: ‘the goad of bondage,’ as Conington suggests. Acre, from the same radical as aculeus.