by Petronius
[CXL] Matrona inter primas honesta, Philomela nomine, quae multas saepe hereditates officio aetatis extorserat, tum anus et floris extincti, filium filiamque ingerebat orbis senibus, et, per hanc successionem artem suam perseverabat extendere. Ea ergo ad Eumolpum venit et commendare liberos suos eius prudentiae bonitatique <. . .>credere se et vota sua. Illum esse solum in toto orbe terrarum, qui praeceptis etiam salubribus instruere iuvenes quotidie posset. Ad summam, relinquere se pueros in domo Eumolpi, ut illum loquentem audirent: quae sola posset hereditas iuvenibus dari. Nec aliter fecit ac dixerat, filiamque speciosissimam cum fratre ephebo in cubiculo reliquit, simulavitque se in templum ire ad vota nuncupanda. Eumolpus, qui tam frugi erat ut illi etiam ego puer viderer, non dislulit puellam invitare ad pygesiaca sacra. Sed et podagricum se esse lumborumque solutorum omnibus dixerat, et si non servasset integram simulationem, periclitabatur totam paene tragoediam evertere. Itaque ut constaret mendacio fides, puellam quidem exoravit ut sederet super commendatam bonitatem, Coraci autem imperavit ut lectum, in quo ipse iacebat, subiret positisque in pavimento manibus dominum lumbis suis commoveret. Ille lente parebat imperio, puellaeque artificium pari motu remunerabat. Cum ergo res ad effectum spectaret, clara Eumolpus voce exhortabatur Coraca, ut spissaret officium. Sic inter mercennarium amicamque positus senex veluti oscillatione ludebat. Hoc semel iterumque ingenti risu, etiam suo, Eumolpus fecerat. Itaque ego quoque, ne desidia consuetudinem perderem, dum frater sororis suae automata per clostellum miratur, accessi temptaturus an pateretur iniuriam. Nec se reiciebat a blanditiis doctissimus puer, sed me numen inimicum ibi quoque invenit. <. . .>
“Dii maiores sunt, qui me restituerunt in integrum. Mercurius enim, qui animas ducere et reducere solet, suis beneficiis reddidit mihi quod manus irata praeciderat, ut scias me gratiosiorem esse quam Protesilaum aut quemquam alium antiquorum.” Haec locutus sustuli tunicam, Eumolpoque me totum approbavi. At ille primo exhorruit, deinde ut plurimum crederet, utraque manu deorum beneficia tractat. <. . .>
[140] Matrona inter primas honesta, Philomela nomine, quae multas saepe hereditates officio aetatis extorserat, tum anus et floris extincti, filium filiamque ingerebat orbis senibus, et per hanc successionem artem suam perseverabat extendere. Ea ergo ad Eumolpum venit et commendare liberos suos eius prudentiae bonitatique . . . credere se et vota sua. Illum esse solum in toto orbe terrarum, qui praeceptis etiam salubribus instruere iuvenes quotidie posset. Ad summam, relinquere se pueros in domo Eumolpi, ut illum loquentem audirent . . . quae sola posset hereditas iuvenibus dari. Nec aliter fecit ac dixerat, filiamque speciosissimam cum fratre ephebo in cubiculo reliquit simulavitque se in templum ire ad vota nuncupanda. Eumolpus, qui tam frugi erat ut illi etiam ego puer viderer, non distulit puellam invitare ad pigiciaca sacra. Sed et podagricum se esse lumborumque solutorum omnibus dixerat, et si non servasset integram simulationem, periclitabatur totam paene tragoediam evertere. Itaque ut constaret mendacio fides, puellam quidem exoravit, ut sederet super commendatam bonitatem, Coraci autem imperavit, ut lectum, in quo ipse iacebat, subiret positisque in pavimento manibus dominum lumbis suis commoveret. Ille lente parebat imperio puellaeque artificium pari motu remunerabat. Cum ergo res ad effectum spectaret, clara Eumolpus voce exhortabatur Coraca, ut spissaret officium. Sic inter mercennarium amicamque positus senex veluti oscillatione ludebat. Hoc semel iterumque ingenti risu, etiam suo, Eumolpus fecerat. Itaque ego quoque, ne desidia consuetudinem perderem, dum frater sororis suae automata per clostellum miratur, accessi temptaturus, an pateretur iniuriam. Nec se reiciebat a blanditiis doctissimus puer, sed me numen inimicum ibi quoque invenit . . .
“Dii maiores sunt, qui me restituerunt in integrum. Mercurius enim, qui animas ducere et reducere solet, suis beneficiis reddidit mihi, quod manus irata praeciderat, ut scias me gratiosiorem esse quam Protesilaum aut quemquam alium antiquorum.” Haec locutus sustuli tunicam Eumolpoque me totum approbavi. At ille primo exhorruit, deinde ut plurimum crederet, utraque manu deorum beneficia tractat . . .
“Socrates, the friend of God and man, used to boast that he had never peeped into a shop, or allowed his eyes to rest on any large crowd. So nothing is more blessed than always to converse with wisdom.”
“All that is very true,” I said, “and no one deserves to fall into misery sooner than the covetous. But how would cheats or pickpockets live, if they did not expose little boxes or purses jingling with money, like hooks, to collect a crowd? Just as dumb creatures are snared by food, human beings would not be caught unless they had a nibble of hope.”. . .
SECTION CXLI.
[CXLI]
Excaecabat pecuniae ingens fama oculos animosque miserorum. Gorgias paratus erat exsequi.
“De stomachi tui recusatione non habeo quod timeam. Sequetur imperium, si promiseris illi pro unius horae fastidio multorum bonorum pensationem. Operi modo oculos, et finge te non humana viscera, sed centies sestertium comesse. Accedit huc, quod aliqua inveniemus blandimenta, quibus saporem mutemus. Neque enim ulla caro per se placet, sed arte quadam corrumpitur, et stomacho conciliatur averso. Quod si exemplis vis quoque probari consilium, Saguntini oppressi ab Hannibale humanas edere carnes, nec hereditatem expectabant. Petelini idem fecerunt in ultima fame, nec quicquam aliud in hac epulatione captabant, nisi tantum ne esurirent. Cum esset Numantia a Scipione capta, inventae sunt matres, quae liberorum suorum tenerent semesa in sinu corpora.”
CETERA DESVNT.
[141] “The ship from Africa with your money and slaves that you promised does not arrive. The fortunehunters are tired out, and their generosity is shrinking. So that unless I am mistaken, our usual luck is on its way back to punish you.”. . .
“All those who come into money under my will, except my own children, will get what I have left them on one condition, that they cut my body in pieces and eat it up in sight of the crowd.” . . .
“We know that in some countries a law is still observed, that dead people shall be eaten by their relations, and the result is that sick people are often blamed for spoiling their own flesh. So I warn my friends not to disobey my orders, but to eat my body as heartily as they damned my soul.” . . .
His great reputation for wealth dulled the eyes and brains of the fools. Gorgias was ready to manage the funeral. . . .
“I am not at all afraid of your stomach turning. You will get it under control if you promise to repay it for one unpleasant hour with heaps of good things. Just shut your eyes and dream you are eating up a solid million instead of human flesh. Besides, we shall find some kind of sauce which will take the taste away. No flesh at all is pleasant in itself, it has to be artificially disguised and reconciled to the unwilling digestion. But if you wish the plan to be supported by precedents, the people of Saguntum, when Hannibal besieged them, ate human flesh without any legacy in prospect. The people of Petelia did likewise in the extremities of
famine, and gained nothing by the diet, except of course that they were no longer hungry. And when Numantia was stormed by Scipio, some women were found with the half-eaten bodies of their children hidden in their bosoms.” . . .
The Biographies
The acropolis of Cumae, an ancient city of Magna Graecia, on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea — Petronius’ high position made him an object of envy. Having attracted the jealousy of Tigellinus, the commander of the emperor’s guard, he was accused of treason. He was arrested at Cumae in AD 65, but did not wait for a sentence, chosing to take his own life.
The lower city of Cumae seen from the acropolis
INTRODUCTION TO PETRONIUS by Michael Heseltine
THE author of the Satyricon is identified by the large majority of scholars with Gaius Petronius, (He is called Titus Petronius by Plutarch (De Adulatore et Amico, 27).) the courtier of Nero. There is a long tradition in support of the identification, and the probability that it is correct appears especially strong in the light of Tacitus’s account of the character and death of Gaius Petronius in the eighteenth and nineteenth chapters of the sixteenth book of the Annals. Mr. John Jackson has translated the passage as follows:
Petronius deserves a word in retrospect. He was a man who passed his days in sleep, his nights in the ordinary duties and recreations of life: others had achieved greatness by the sweat of their brows — Petronius idled into fame. Unlike most who walk the road to ruin, he was never regarded as either debauchee or wastrel, but rather as the finished artist in extravagance. In both word and action, he displayed a freedom and a sort of self-abandonment which were welcomed as the indiscretions of an unsophisticated nature. Yet, in his proconsulship of Bithynia, and later as consul elect, he showed himself an energetic and capable administrator. Then came the revulsion: his genuine or affected vices won him admittance into the narrow circle of Nero’s intimates, and he became the Arbiter of Elegance, whose sanction alone divested pleasure of vulgarity and luxury of grossness.
“His success aroused the jealousy of Tigellinus against a possible rival — a professor of voluptuousness better equipped than himself. Playing on the emperor’s lust for cruelty, to -which all other lusts were secondary, he suborned a slave to turn informer, charged Petronius with his friendship for Scaevinus, deprived him of the opportunity of defence, and threw most of his household into prison.
At that time, it happened, the court had migrated to Campania; and Petronius had reached Cumae, when his detention was ordered. He disdained to await the lingering issue of hopes and fears: still, he would not take a brusque farewell of life. An incision was made in his veins: they were bound up under his directions, and opened again, while he conversed with his friends — not on the gravest of themes, nor in the key of the dying hero. He listened to no disquisitions on the immortality of the soul or the dogmas of philosophy, but to frivolous song and playful verses. Some of his slaves tasted of his bounty, others of the whip. He sat down to dinner, and then drowsed a little; so that death, if compulsory, should at least be natural. Even in his will, he broke through the routine of suicide, and flattered neither Nero nor Tigellinus nor any other of the mighty: instead, he described the emperor’s enormities; added a list of his catamites, his women, and his innovations in lasciviousness; then sealed the document, sent it to Nero, and broke his signet-ring to prevent it from being used to endanger others.”
The reflection arises at once that, given the Satyricon, this kind of book postulates this kind of author. The loose tongue, the levity, and the love of style are common to both. If books betray their writers viii characteristics, Gaius Petronius, as seen by Tacitus, had the imagination and experience needed to depict the adventures of Encolpius.
There is a little evidence, still based on the primary assumption, more exact in its bearing. The Satyricon contains a detailed criticism of and a poem directed against the style of a writer who must be Lucan. Gaius Petronius was not the man to pass over the poet, epigrammatist, and courtier, in whose epoch and circle he himself shone. He may have deplored Lucan’s poetic influence, but he could not neglect it, for Lucan was essentially the singer of his own day. No age was so favourable as that of Nero for the introduction into a supremely scandalous tale of a reasoned and appreciative review of the Pharsalia, the outstanding poem of the time.
The criticism of the schools of rhetoric in their effect upon education and language, and the general style of the book in reflective and descriptive passages, point more vaguely to a similar date of composition.
Gaius Petronius found in his work a form which allowed complete expression to the many sides of his active and uncontrolled intellect. Its loose construction is matched by its indifference to any but stylistic reforms; it draws no moral; it is solely and properly occupied in presenting an aspect of things seen by a loiterer at one particular corner of the world. What we possess of it is a fragment, or rather a series of excerpts from the fifteenth and sixteenth books, we know not how representative of the original whole.
Of this the best-known portion, the description of Trimalchio’s dinner, was hidden from the modern world until the middle of the seventeenth century, and was first printed in 1664.
It is as difficult to grasp any structural outline in the Satyricon as it is in Tristram Shandy. Both alternate with flashing rapidity between exhibitions of pedantry, attacks on pedants, and indecency, in which Sterne is the more successful because he is the less obvious.
But Petronius, so far as his plan was not entirely original, was following as model Varro’s Menippean satires, and had before him the libel of Seneca on Claudius, the Apocolocyntosis. The traditional title of his work, Satyricon, is derived from the word Satura, a medley, and means that he was free to pass at will from subject to subject, and from prose to verse and back: it is his achievement that the threads of his story, broken as we hold them, yet show something of the colour and variety of life itself. We call his book a novel, and so pay him a compliment which he alone of Roman writers has earned.
Petronius’s novel shares with life the quality of moving ceaselessly without knowing why. It differs from most existences in being very seldom dull. An anonymous writer of the eighteenth century, making Observations on the Greek and Roman Classics in a Series of Letters to a Young Nobleman, (Published in London, 1753.) is of the opinion that: “You will in no Writer, my dear Lord, meet with so much true delicacy of thought, in none with purer language.” This judgment is meant for the age of Smollett and Fielding; but there is no question of the justice of the later remark: “You will be charmed with the ease, and you will be surprised with the variety of his characters.”
These characters are one and all the product of a period in history when the primary aim of the ripest civilization in the world was money-making. It was this aim which drew Trimalchio from his unknown birthplace in Asia Minor to the glitter and luxury and unnatural passion of a South Italian town. He differs from the minor personages who crowd his dining-room only in the enormous success -with which he has plied the arts of prostitution, seduction, flattery and fraud. The persons in whom the action of the novel centres, Encolpius the mouthpiece of the author, Ascyltos, and Giton, are there by the kindness of Agamemnon, a parasite teacher of the rhetoric which ate swiftly into the heart of Latin language and thought. Giton lives by his charms, Ascyltos is hardly more than a foil to Encolpius, a quarrelsome and lecherous butt.
That part of the novel which deals with Trimalchio’s dinner introduces a crowd of characters, and gives the most vivid picture extant in classical literature of the life of the small town. The pulsating energy of greed is felt in it everywhere. Men become millionaires with American rapidity, and enjoy that condition as hazardously in Cumae as in Wall Street. The shoulders of one who wallows in Trimalchio’s cushions are still sore with carrying firewood for sale; another, perhaps the first undertaker who made a fortune out of extravagant funerals, a gourmet and spendthrift, sits there composing lies to baffle his hungry creditors. Trimalchio towers a
bove them by reason of his more stable fortunes and his colossal impudence. He can afford to delegate the conduct of his business, to grow a little negligent, even — for his accounts are six months in arrear — to care for the life of the spirit.
He believes, of course, in astrology; he sings excerpts out of tune from the last musical play, and takes phrases from the lips of the comic star whom Nero delights to honour. He has two libraries (The MS says three, and may be right; he is drunk when he boasts of them.), one of Greek, one of Latin books, and mythology courses through his brain in incorrigible confusion.
His fellow townsmen and guests, whom he insults, do not aspire to these heights. Dama, Seleucus, and Phileros are rich merely in the common coin of everyday talk, in the proverbial wisdom which seems to gather strength and brightness from being constantly exchanged. “A hot drink is as good as an overcoat”—” Flies have their virtues, we are nothing but bubbles”— “An old love pinches like a crab”—” It is easy when everything goes fair and square.” In these phrases and their like Latin literature speaks to us for once in the tones we know in England through Justice Shallow or Joseph Poorgrass. Nearly all warm themselves with this fatuous talk of riches and drink and deaths, but one man, Ganymede, a shrewd Asiatic immigrant like Trimalchio himself, blows cold on their sentimentality with his searching talk of bread-prices in Cumae, rising pitilessly through drought and the operation of a ring of bakers in league with officials. He tells us in brilliant phrases of the starving poor, of the decay of religion, of lost pride in using good flour. Then Echion, an old-clothes dealer, overwhelms him -with a flood of suburban chatter about games, and children, and chickens, and the material blessings of education. But Ganymede is the sole character in Petronius’s novel who brings to light the reverse side of Trimalchio’s splendour. A system of local government which showers honours upon vulgarity, and allows Trimalchio his bath, his improved sanitation, his host of servants, his house with so many doors that no guest may go in and out by the same one, is invariably true to type in leaving poor men to die in the streets. The very existence of poverty becomes dim for Trimalchio, half unreal, so that he can jest at Agamemnon for taking as the theme of a set speech the eternal quarrel of rich and poor.
