Persius has generally been considered far less attractive than Horace or Juvenal, and thus far less important as a contributor to the history of British satire. Indeed, the few modern studies of Persius' relevance for the eighteenth century suggest an advanced case of anorexia, a willful starvation and withdrawal of nourishment rather than a healthy leanness. Most earlier readers also placed Persius beneath Horace and Juvenal, though still in their qualitative group, and still of great interest and significance. His dark, rough, grave poems were essential for the ongoing Renaissance view of what satire should be, and his other conventions mingled well with those of Juvenal to create a satirist of immediate utility for Pope and the opposition to Walpole – the biting, hostile, somber, virtuous outcast who attacked a society rotting from the top down.

Some of his attraction can be documented in the list of English translations from 1616 to 1817: Holyday (1616), Dryden (1693), Eelbeck (1719), Sheridan (1728), Senhouse (1730), Stirling (1736), Brewster (1733–42), Burton (1752), Madan (1789), Drummond (1797), anonymous (1806), Howes (1809), and Gifford (1817). Oldham acknowledges his debt to Persius for the Prologue of his Satyrs upon the Jesuits (1679); F. A. imitates the third satire in 1685; Tom Brown tries his hand at the Prologue and part of the first satire in 1707; six different imitators emerge between 1730 and 1740; Thomas Neville imitates most of the satires in 1769; Edward Burnaby Greene follows suit in 1779; an unknown author applies the fourth satire to Pitt in 1784; William Gifford's Baviad (with its title-page motto from Juvenal 1.1–4) massively expands the first satire in 1791; and George Daniel's Modern Dunciad performs a similar task in 1814.