Note 60 — A. PERSIUS FLACCUS

A forcible passage, on which Conington says: ‘The conception here is of life passed in a Boeotian atmosphere of thick fogs and pestilential vapors, which the sun never penetrates— probably with especial reference to the pleasures of sense, of which Persius has just been speaking. So the “vapor, heavy, hueless, formless, cold,” in Tennyson’s “Vision of Sin.”’—crassos dies: sub crasso aere (Jahn).—transisse: Heinr. comp. Tib., 1, 4, 33: vidi iam iuvenem, premeret cum serior aetas, | maerentem stultos praeteriisse dies.—lucem palustrem: ‘boggy’ = ‘foggy light’ is ‘light choked by fog.’ Crassos dies lucemque palustrem must be connected closely—‘gross days in foggy light’—so as to get rid of an awkward Zeugma with transisse.