From John Dunlop’s History of Fiction: “The most celebrated fable of ancient Rome is the work of Petronius Arbiter, perhaps the most remarkable fiction which has dishonored the literature of any nation. It is the only fable of that period now extant, but is a strong proof of the monstrous corruption of the times in which such a production could be tolerated, though no doubt writings of bad moral tendency might be circulated before the invention of printing, without arguing the depravity they would have evinced, if presented to the world subsequent to that period.
“The work of Petronius is in the form of a satire, and, according to some commentators, is directed against the vices of the court of Nero, who is thought to be delineated under the names of Trimalchio and Agamemnon, — an opinion which has been justly ridiculed by Voltaire. The satire is written in a manner which was first introduced by Varro; verses are intermixed with prose, and jests with serious remark. It has much the air of a romance, both in the incidents and their disposition; but the story is too well known, and too scandalous, to be particularly detailed.
“The scene is laid in Magna Graecia; Encolpius is the chief character in the work, and the narrator of events; — he commences by a lamentation on the decline of eloquence, and while listening to the reply of Agamemnon, a professor of oratory, he loses his companion, Ascyltos. Wandering through the town in search of him, he is finally conducted by an old woman to a retirement where the incidents that occur are analogous to the scene. The subsequent adventures, — the feast of Trimalchio, — the defection and return of Giton, — the amour of Eumolpus in Bithynia, — the voyage in the vessel of Lichas, — the passion and disappointment of Circe, — all these follow each other without much art of arrangement, an apparent defect which may arise from the mutilated form in which the satire has descended to us.
“The style of Petronius has been much applauded for its elegance, — it certainly possesses considerable naivete and grace, and is by much too fine a veil for so deformed a body.”
From Addison’s Preface to his Translation of Petronius: “‘Petronius,’ says that judicious critic, Mons. St. Evremond, ‘is to be admired throughout, for the purity of his style and the delicacy of his sentiments; but that which more surprises me, is his great easiness in giving us ingenuously all sorts of Characters. Terence is perhaps the only author of Antiquity that enters best into the nature of persons. But still this fault I find in him, that he has too little variety; his whole talent being confined in making servants and old men, a covetous father and a debauched son, a slave and an intriguer, to speak properly, according to their several characters. So far, and no farther, the capacity of Terence reaches. You must not expect from him either gallantry or passion, either thoughts or the discourse of a gentleman. Petronius, who had a universal wit, hits upon the genius of all professions, and adapts himself, as he pleases, to a thousand different natures. If he introduces a Declaimer, he assumes his air and his style so well, that one could say he had used to declaim all his life. Nothing expresses more naturally the constant disorders of a debauched life than these everlasting quarrels of Encolpius and Ascyltos about Giton.
“Is not Quartilla an admirable portrait of a prostitute woman? Does not the marriage of young Giton and innocent Pannychis give us the image of a complete wantonness?
“All that a sot ridiculously magnificent in banquets, a vain affecter of niceness, and an impertinent, are able to do, you have at the Feast of Trimalchio.
“Eumolpus shows us Nero’s extravagant folly for the Theater, and his vanity in reciting his own poems; and you may observe, as you run over so many noble verses, of which he makes an ill use, that an excellent poet may be a very ill man. . . . The infirmity he has of making verses out of season, even at death’s door; his fluentness in repeating his compositions in all places and at all times, answers his most ridiculous setting out, where he characteristically tells him, “I am a Poet, and I hope, of no ordinary genius.’ . . .
“There is nothing so natural as the character of Chrysis, and none of our confidantes come near her. Not to mention her first conversation with Polyaenus, — what she tells him of her mistress, upon the affront she received, has an inimitable simplicity. But nobody, besides Petronius, could have described Circe, so beautiful, so voluptuous, and so polite. Enothea, the Priestess of Priapus, ravishes me with the miracles she promises, with her enchantments, her sacrifices, her sorrow for the death of the consecrated goose, and the manner in which she is pacified when Polyaenus makes her a present, with which she might purchase a goose and gods too, if she thought fit.
“Philumena, that complaisant lady, is no less entertaining, who after she had cullied several men out of their estates, in the flower of her beauty, now being old and by consequence unfit for pleasures, endeavored to keep up this noble trade by the means of her children, whom she took every opportunity to introduce with a thousand fine discourses to old men, who had no heirs of their own.
“In a word, there is no part of Nature, no profession, which Petronius doth not admirably paint. He is a Poet, an Orator, a Philosopher, and much more besides, at his pleasure.”
Lastly Teufel, writing of the Satyricon in Pauly’s Encyclopedia, says: “The whole plan of the work is that of a novel; two freedmen, Encolpius and Ascyltos, are enamored of a boy Giton, and the adventures which have their origin in this circ*mstance, and which they encounter severally, the acquaintances which they make (for instance of Trimalchio and Eumolpus), form the contents at least of that portion of the book which has come down to us. But the book contains in this dress of a narrative, descriptions of manners, partly of single places (for example of Croton), partly of certain classes (for example of Trimalchio, a rich upstart, who apes the manners of a refined man of the world, but exposes himself most ridiculously, of Encolpius, a good-natured, cowardly and licentious Greek, of Eumolpus, a vain and tasteless poet, and at the same time a thoroughly demoralized preacher of virtue), all drawn with masterly truthfulness even to the minutest detail. The tone is humorous throughout; the dramatis personae act and speak, even in the most offensive circ*mstances, with an openness, unconcern and self-satisfaction, as if they had the most undoubted right to be and think as they do; at the same time, a vein of gentle irony pervades the whole, which indicates the author’s moral independence and higher standpoint, as well as his sincere gratification at the amusing and filthy scenes which he describes; he accompanies his heroes at every step with a smile on his lips and a low laugh. The work belongs therefore, by its contents as well as its tone, to the department of satire, resembling in tone Horace, in form the Minippean satire.
“For not only does the language occasionally pass over from prose to verse (limping iambs and trochees), but entire poems of greater extent are interwoven (Troiae Halosis and Bellum Civile), which are usually put in the mouth of Eumolpus, and which always have a satirical object, sometimes a double one, as in the case with the Bellum Civile, which ridicules Lucan, as well as his opponents personified by Eumolpus, the writer with genuine humor placing himself above both, and dealing against both his blows with impartial justice. The language is always suited to the character of the persons speaking, elegant in Encolpius, bombastic in Trimalchio. The language put in the mouth of the last is for us an invaluable specimen of the lingua Romana rustica, as it obtained in that part of Italy where the scene is laid, — in Campania, and especially Naples. In conformity with the originally Greek character of this region, the language of Trimalchio and his companions is full of Greek words and Grecisms of the boldest kind (such as coupling the neuter plural with the verb in the singular). Characteristic of the local dialect are the many archaisms, compounds not known in the written language, the frequent solecisms, the many proverbial and extravagant expressions, the numerous oaths and curses.”
A brilliant passage from Emile Thomas’ remarkable study of Petronius and contemporary Roman society, entitled, “Petrone: L’Envers de la Societe Romaine” (Paris, 1902), may fitly sum up the situation. “This roman
ce,” he writes, “such delightful and at the same time such difficult reading, a work at once exquisite and repulsive, gives us by virtue of its defects no less than of its merits a fairly adequate representation of the under-side of Roman civilization. Would it not be a gain, and a great one, for the systematic history of morals and literature at Rome to restore this work to its proper place? and is not this place pretty well identical, barring of course the difference of field and form, with that reserved in Greek Art for the vases, statuettes and pottery of Tanagra, and of the periods before and after Tanagra; in one word, whatever allows us to comprehend, or at least get a glimpse of, the Ancient world under the aspects of its everyday life? Everybody knows how successful has been the revolution, and how fruitful in results, which has been brought about under our own eyes in these departments of Greek History and Archeology.
“Well! here (in Petronius) we have among the authors of Rome a veritable genre painter, of a sort to take the place for us, at any rate in part, of the graceful vase-paintings of Antiquity, as well as of the grotesques of Greek art.
“From yet another aspect, not a few points of resemblance may be detected between Petronius and the lighter literary productions, novels, tales, burlesque narratives, vers de societe, and even journals, of the last two Centuries. Our Author is refined, not to say blase, but none the less inquisitive, full both of sagacity and passion, always exact, and above and beyond all else, a supreme master of style. Laying aside all false delicacy, let us hear what he has to tell us of the daily routine, of the outward aspect, and even of the hidden secrets, of Roman existence. Nowhere else has human life been lived on an ampler scale; no other people, no other society, has ever displayed so much variety, so many contrasts, such heights of grandeur and such depths of degradation.”
ALFRED R. ALLINSON.
CHAPTER ONE
[I] Such a long time has passed since first I promised you the story of my adventures I am resolved to keep my word today, seeing we are happily met together to season those matters with lively conversation and tales of a merry and diverting sort.
Fabricius Veiento was discoursing very wisely to us just now on the follies of superstition, exposing the various forms of priestly charlatanry, the holy men’s mania for prophecy, and the effrontery they display in expounding mysteries they very often utterly fail to comprehend themselves. [I] Is it not much the same type of madness that afflicts our declaimers, who shout: “These wounds I got, defending our common liberties; this eye I lost in your behalf. Give me a helping hand to lead me to my children, for my poor maimed limbs refuse to bear my weight.” Even such extravagances might be borne, if they really served to guide beginners in the way of eloquence; but all pupils gain by these high-flown themes, these empty sounding phrases, is this, that on entering the forum they imagine themselves transported into a new and strange world.
This is the reason, in my opinion, why young men grow up such blockheads in the schools, because they neither see nor hear one single thing connected with the usual circ*mstances of everyday life, nothing but stuff about pirates lurking on the seashore with fetters in their hands, tyrants issuing edicts to compel sons to cut off their own fathers’ heads, oracles in times of pestilence commanding three virgins or more to be sacrificed to stay the plague, — honey-sweet, well-rounded sentences, words and facts alike as it were, besprinkled with poppy and sesame.
[II] Under such a training it is no more possible to acquire good taste than it is not to stink, if you live in a kitchen. Give me leave to tell you that you rhetoricians are chiefly to blame for the ruin of Oratory, for with your silly, idle phrases, meant only to tickle the ears of an audience, you have enervated and deboshed the very substance of true eloquence.
Young men were not bound down to declamations in the days when Sophocles and Euripides found the very words they wanted to best express their meaning. No cloistered professor had as yet darkened men’s intellects, when Pindar and the nine Lyric bards shrank from emulating the Homeric note. And not to cite poets exclusively, — I cannot see that either Plato or Demosthenes ever practised this sort of mental exercise. A noble, and so to say chaste, style is not overloaded with ornament, not turgid; its own natural beauty gives it elevation.
Then after a while this windy, extravagant deluge of words invaded Athens from Asia, and like a malignant star, blasting the minds of young men aiming at lofty ideals, instantly broke up all rules of art and struck eloquence dumb. Since that day who has reached the perfection of Thucydides, the glory of Hyperides? Nay! not a poem has been written of bright and wholesome complexion; but all, as if fed on the same unhealthy diet, have lacked stamina to attain old age. Painting moreover shared the same fate, after Egypt presumptuously invented a compendious method for that noble Art.
[III] Such and suchlike reflections I was indulging in one day before a numerous audience, when Agamemnon came up, curious to see who it was they were listening to so attentively. Well! he declined to allow me to declaim longer in the Portico than he had himself sweated in the schools but: “Young man,” he cries, “seeing your words are something better than mere popular commonplaces, and — a very rare occurrence — you are an admirer of sound sense, I will confide to you a professional secret. In the choice of these exercises it is not the masters that are to blame. They are forced to be just as mad as all the rest; for if they refuse to teach what pleases their scholars, they will be left, as Cicero says, to lecure to empty benches. Just as false-hearted sycophants, scheming for a seat at a rich man’s table, make it their chief business to discover what will be most agreeable hearing to their host, for indeed their only way to gain their end is by cajolement and flattery; so a professor of Rhetoric, unless like a fisherman he arm his hook with the bait he knows the fish will take, may stand long enough on his rock without a chance of success.
[IV] “Whose fault is it then? It is the parents deserve censure, who will not give their children the advantages of a strict training. In the first place their hopes, like everything else, are centered in ambition, and so being impatient to see their wishes fulfilled, they hurry lads into the forum when still raw and half taught, and indue mere babes with the mantle of eloquence, an art they admit themselves to be equaled by none in difficulty. If only they would let them advance step by step in their tasks, so that serious students might be broken in by solid reading, steady their minds with the precepts of philosophy, chasten their style with unsparing correction, study deep and long what they propose to imitate, and refuse to be dazzled by puerile graces, then and then only would the grand old type of Oratory recover its former authority and stateliness. Nowadays, boys waste their time at school; as youths, they are jeered at in the forum, and what is worse than either, no one will acknowledge, as an old man, the faultiness of the teaching he received in his younger days.
“But that you may not imagine I disapprove of satirical impromptus in the Lucilian vein, I will myself throw my notions on this matter into verse:
[V] “He that would be an orator, must strive
To follow out the discipline of old,
And heed the laws of stern frugality;
Not his to haunt the Court with fawning brow,
Nor sit a flatterer at great folks’ boards;
Not his with boon companions o’er the wine
To overcloud his brain, nor at the play
To sit and clap, agape at actors’ tricks.
But whether to Tritonia’s famous halls
The Muses lead his steps, or to those walls
That Spartan exiles rear’d or where
The Sirens’ song thrill’d the enraptured air
Of all his tasks let Poesy be first,
And Homer’s verse the fount to quench his thirst.
Soon will be master deep Socratic lore,
And wield the arms Demosthenes erst bore.
Then to new modes must he in turn be led,
And Grecian wit to Roman accents wed.
Nor in the forum only will he find
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Meet occupation for his busy mind;
On books he’ll feast, the poet’s words of fire,
Heroic tales of War and Tully’s patriot ire,
Such be thy studies; then, whate’er the theme,
Pour forth thine eloquence in copious stream.”
[VI] Listening attentively to the speaker, I never noticed that Ascyltos had given me the slip; and I was still walking up and down in the gardens full of the burning words I had heard, when a great mob of students rushed into the Portico. Apparently these had just come from hearing an impromptu lecture of some critic or other who had been cutting up Agamemnon’s speech. So whilst the lads were making fun of his sentiments and abusing the arrangement of the whole discourse, I seized the opportunity to escape, and started off at a run in pursuit of Ascyltos. But I was heedless about the road I followed, and indeed felt by no means sure of the situation of our inn, the result being that whichever direction I took, I presently found myself back again at my starting point. At last, exhausted with running and dripping with sweat, I came across a little old woman, who was selling herbs.
[VII] “Prithee, good mother,” say I, “can you tell me where I live?” Charmed with the quiet absurdity of my question, “Why certainly!” she replied; and getting up, went on before me. I thought she must be a witch; but presently, when we had arrived at a rather shy neighborhood, the obliging old lady drew back the curtain of a doorway, and said, “Here is where you ought to live.”
I was just protesting I did not know the house, when I catch sight of mysterious figures prowling between rows of name-boards, and naked harlots. Then when too late, I saw I had been brought into a house of ill fame. So cursing the old woman’s falseness, I threw my robe over my head and made a dash right through the brothel to the opposite door, when lo! just on the threshold, whom should I meet but Ascyltos, fa*gged out and half dead like myself? You would have thought the very same old hag had been his conductress. I made him a mocking bow, and asked him what he was doing in such a disreputable place?
