Note 1355 — PERSIUS.

Natta. We find a Pinarius Natta mentioned, Tac., Ann., iv., 34, as one of the clients of Sejanus. Cicero also speaks of the Pinarii Nattæ as patricians and nobles. De Divin., ii., xxi. (Cf. pro Mur., xxxv. Att., iv., 8.) Horace uses the name for a gross person. "Ungor olivo non quo fraudatis immundus Natta lucernis," i., Sat. vi., 124; and Juvenal for a public robber, "Quum Pansa eripiat quidquid tibi Natta reliquit," Sat. viii., 95. He is here put for one so sunk in profligacy, with heart so hardened, and moral sense so obscured by habitual vice, as to be unable even to perceive the abyss in which he is plunged. Cf. Arist., Eth., ii., 5, 8. "Reason and revelation alike teach us the awful truth, that sin exercises a deadening effect on the moral perception of right and wrong. Ignorance may be pleaded as an excuse, but not that ignorance of which man himself is the cause. Such ignorance is the result of willful sin. This corrupts the moral sense, hardens the heart, destroys the power of conscience, and afflicts us with judicial blindness, so that we actually lose at last the power of seeing the things which belong unto our peace." P. 67 of Browne's translation of the Ethics, in Bohn's Classical Library. (For discinctus, vid. Orell. ad Hor., Epod. i., 34.)