by Daisy Dunn
But neither human resourcefulness nor the emperor’s largesse nor appeasement of the gods could stop belief in the nasty rumour that an order had been given for the fire. To dispel the gossip Nero therefore found culprits on whom he inflicted the most exotic punishments. These were people hated for their shameful offences whom the common people called Christians. The man who gave them their name, Christus, had been executed during the rule of Tiberius by the procurator Pontius Pilatus. The pernicious superstition had been temporarily suppressed, but it was starting to break out again, not just in Judaea, the starting point of that curse, but in Rome, as well, where all that is abominable and shameful in the world flows together and gains popularity.
And so, at first, those who confessed were apprehended, and subsequently, on the disclosures they made, a huge number were found guilty—more because of their hatred of mankind than because they were arsonists. As they died they were further subjected to insult. Covered with hides of wild beasts, they perished by being torn to pieces by dogs; or they would be fastened to crosses and, when daylight had gone, burned to provide lighting at night. Nero had offered his gardens as a venue for the show, and he would also put on circus entertainments, mixing with the plebs in his charioteer’s outfit or standing up in his chariot. As a result, guilty though these people were and deserving exemplary punishment, pity for them began to well up because it was felt that they were being exterminated not for the public good, but to gratify one man’s cruelty.
DINNER AT TRIMALCHIO’S
Satyricon
Petronius Arbiter
Translation ascribed to Oscar Wilde, 1902
Petronius (AD 27–66) was ‘arbiter of elegance’ to the Emperor Nero. In AD 66, however, he was implicated in a plot against the emperor and committed suicide. His brilliant novel, the Satyricon, belongs to the last years of his life. Its most famous episode, the Cena Trimalchionis or ‘Dinner of Trimalchio’, sees the young narrator Encolpius and his friends go to dine at the house of the achingly nouveau Trimalchio, a former slave or ‘freedman’, who earned his fortune by winning his master’s favour and exporting goods from Rome. In the twentieth century, the boorish Trimalchio was an inspiration for F. Scott Fitzgerald’s character Jay Gatsby.
When this translation was first published in Paris in 1902 it was prefaced by a slip of paper identifying its translator as Sebastian Melmoth – the name Oscar Wilde adopted in exile. Although Wilde was an excellent classicist, he was apparently not the real translator1 of this story; the attribution was retracted some years after his death.
Well! at last we take our places, Alexandrian slave-boys pouring snow water over our hands, and others succeeding them to wash our feet and cleanse our toe nails with extreme dexterity. Not even while engaged in this unpleasant office were they silent, but sang away over their work. I had a mind to try whether all the house servants were singers, and accordingly asked for a drink of wine. Instantly an attendant was at my side, pouring out the liquor to the accompaniment of the same sort of shrill recitative. Demand what you would, it was the same; you might have supposed yourself among a troupe of pantomime actors, rather than at a respectable citizen’s table.
Then the preliminary course was served in very elegant style. For all were now at table except Trimalchio, for whom the first place was reserved,—by a reversal of ordinary usage. Among the other hors d’oeuvres stood a little ass of Corinthian bronze with a packsaddle holding olives, white olives on one side, black on the other. The animal was flanked right and left by silver dishes, on the rim of which Trimalchio’s name was engraved and the weight. On arches built up in the form of miniature bridges were dormice seasoned with honey and poppy-seed. There were sausages too smoking hot on a silver grill, and underneath (to imitate coals) Syrian plums and pomegranate seeds.
We were in the middle of these elegant trifles when Trimalchio himself was carried in to the sound of music, and was bolstered up among a host of tiny cushions,—a sight that set one or two indiscreet guests laughing. And no wonder; his bald head poked up out of a scarlet mantle, his neck was closely muffled, and over all was laid a napkin with a broad purple stripe or laticlave, and long fringes hanging down either side. Moreover he wore on the little finger of his left hand a massive ring of silver gilt, and on the last joint of the next finger a smaller ring, apparently of solid gold, but starred superficially with little ornaments of steel. Nay! to show this was not the whole of his magnificence, his left arm was bare, and displayed a gold bracelet and an ivory circlet with a sparkling clasp to put it on.
After picking his teeth with a silver toothpick, “My friends,” he began, “I was far from desirous of coming to table just yet, but that I might not keep you waiting by my absence, I have sadly interfered with my own amusement. But will you permit me to finish my game?” A slave followed him in, carrying a draught-board of terebinth wood and crystal dice. One special bit of refinement I noticed; instead of the ordinary black and white men he had medals of gold and silver respectively.
Meantime, whilst he is exhausting the vocabulary of a tinker over the game, and we are still at the hors d’oeuvres, a dish was brought in with a basket on it, in which lay a wooden hen, her wings outspread round her as if she were sitting. Instantly a couple of slaves came up, and to the sound of lively music began to search the straw, and pulling out a lot of pea-fowl’s eggs one after the other, handed them round to the company. Trimalchio turns his head at this, saying, “My friends, it was by my orders the hen was set on the peafowl’s eggs yonder; but by God! I am very much afraid they are half-hatched. Still we can but try whether they are still eatable.” For our part, we take our spoons, which weighed at least half a pound each, and break the eggs, which were made of paste. I was on the point of throwing mine away, for I thought I discerned a chick inside. But when I overheard a veteran guest saying, “There should be something good here!” I further investigated the shell, and found a very fine fat beccafico swimming in yolk of egg flavoured with pepper.
Trimalchio had by this time stopped his game and been helped to all the dishes before us. He had just announced in a loud voice that any of us who wanted a second supply of honeyed wine had only to ask for it, when suddenly at a signal from the band, the hors d’oeuvres are whisked away by a troupe of slaves, all singing too. But in the confusion a silver dish happened to fall and a slave picked it up again from the floor; this Trimalchio noticed, and boxing the fellow’s ears, rated him soundly and ordered him to throw it down again. Then a groom came in and began to sweep up the silver along with the other refuse with his besom.
He was succeeded by two long-haired Ethiopians, carrying small leather skins, like the fellows that water the sand in the amphitheatre, who poured wine over our hands; for no one thought of offering water.
After being duly complimented on this refinement, our host cried out, “Fair play’s a jewel!” and accordingly ordered a separate table to be assigned to each guest. “In this way,” he said, “by preventing any crowding, the stinking servants won’t make us so hot.”
Simultaneously there were brought in a number of wine-jars of glass carefully stoppered with plaster, and having labels attached to their necks reading:
FALERNIAN; OPIMIAN VINTAGE
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OLD.
Whilst we were reading the labels, Trimalchio ejaculated, striking his palms together, “Alackaday! to think wine is longer lived than poor humanity! Well! bumpers then! There’s life in wine. ’Tis the right Opimian, I give you my word. I didn’t bring out any so good yesterday, and much better men than you were dining with me.”
So we drank our wine and admired all this luxury in good set terms. Then the slave brought in a silver skeleton, so artfully fitted with its articulations and vertebrae were all movable and would turn and twist in any direction. After he had tossed this once or twice on the table, causing the loosely jointed limbs to take various postures, Trimalchio moralized thus:
Alas! how less than naught are we;
Fr
agile life’s thread, and brief our day!
What this is now, we all shall be;
Drink and make merry while you may.
Our applause was interrupted by the second course, which did not by any means come up to our expectations. Still the oddity of the thing drew the eyes of all. An immense circular tray bore the twelve signs of the zodiac displayed round the circumference, on each of which the Manoiple or Arranger had placed a dish of suitable and appropriate viands: on the Ram ram’s-head pease, on the Bull a piece of beef, on the Twins fried testicles and kidneys, on the Crab simply a Crown, on the Lion African figs, on a Virgin a sow’s haslet, (on Libra a balance with a tart in one scale and a cheese-cake in the other, on Scorpio a small sea-fish, on Sagittarius an eye-seeker, on Capricornus a lobster, on Aquarius a wild goose, on Pisces two mullets. In the middle was a sod of green turf) cut to shape and supporting a honeycomb. Meanwhile an Egyptian slave was carrying bread round in a miniature oven of silver, crooning to himself in a horrible voice a song in praise of wine and laserpitium.
Seeing us look rather blank at the idea of attacking such common fare, Trimalchio cried, “I pray you gentlemen, begin; the best of your dinner is before you.” No sooner had he spoken than four fellows ran prancing in, keeping time to the music, and whipped off the top part of the tray. This done, we beheld underneath, on a second tray in fact, stuffed capons, a sow’s paps, and as a centrepiece a hare fitted with wings to represent Pegasus. We noticed besides four figures of Marsyas, one at each corner of the tray, carrying little wine-skins which spouted out peppered fish-sauce over the fishes swimming in the Channel of the dish.
We all join in the applause started by the domestics and laughingly fall to on the choice viands. Trimalchio, as pleased as anybody with a device of the sort, now called out, “Cut!” Instantly the Carver advanced, and posturing in time to the music, sliced up the joint with such antics you might have thought him a jockey struggling to pull off a chariot-race to the thunder of the organ. Yet all the while Trimalchio kept repeating in a wheedling voice, “Cut! Cut!” For my part, suspecting there was some pretty jest connected with this everlasting reiteration of the word, I made no bones about asking the question of the guest, who sat immediately above me. He had often witnessed similar scenes and told me at once, “You see the man who is carving; well; his name is Cut. The master is calling and commanding him at one and the same time.”
Unable to eat any more, I now turned towards my neighbour in order to glean what information I could, and after indulging in a string of general remarks, presently asked him, “Who is that lady bustling up and down the room yonder?” “Trimalchio’s lady,” he replied; “her name is Fortunata, and she counts her coin by the bushelful! Before? what was she before? Why! my dear Sir! saving your respect, you would have been mighty sorry to take bread from her hand. Now, by hook or by crook, she’s got to heaven, and is Trimalchio’s factotum. In fact if she told him it was dark night at high noon, he’d believe her. The man’s rolling in riches, and really can’t tell what he has and what he hasn’t got; still his good lady looks keenly after everything, and is on the spot where you least expect to see her. She’s temperate, sober and well advised, but she has a sharp tongue of her own and chatters like a magpie between the bed-curtains. When she likes a man, she likes him; and when she doesn’t, well! she doesn’t.
“As for Trimalchio, his lands reach as far as the kites fly, and his money breeds money. I tell you, he has more coin lying idle in his porter’s lodge than would make another man’s whole fortune. Slaves! why, heaven and earth! I don’t believe one in ten knows his own master by sight. For all that, there’s never a one of the fine fellows a word of his wouldn’t send scutting into the nearest rat-hole. And don’t you imagine he ever buys anything; every mortal thing is home grown,—wool, rosin, pepper; call for hen’s milk and he’d supply you! As a matter of fact his wool was not first rate originally; but he purchased rams at Tarentum and so improved the breed. To get home-made Attic honey he had bees imported direct from Athens, hoping at the same time to benefit the native insects a bit by a cross with the Greek fellows. Why! only the other day he wrote to India for mushroom spawn. He has not a single mule but was got by a wild ass. You see all these mattresses; never a one that is not stuffed with the finest wool, purple or scarlet as the case may be. Lucky, lucky dog!
As the dinner party becomes increasingly farcical, Trimalchio requests to see the clothes he will be buried in.
Without a moment’s delay, Stichus produced a white shroud and a magistrate’s gown into the dining-hall, and asked us to feel if they were made of good wool. Then his master added with a laugh, “Mind, Stichus, mice and moth don’t get at them; else I’ll have you burned alive. I wish to be buried in all my bravery, that the whole people may call down blessings on my head.” Immediately afterwards he opened a pot of spikenard, and after rubbing us all with the ointment, “I only hope,” said he, “it will give me as much pleasure when I’m dead as it does now when I’m alive.” Further he ordered the wine vessels to be filled up, telling us to “imagine you are invited guests at my funeral feast.”
The thing was getting positively sickening, when Trimalchio, now in a state of disgusting intoxication, commanded a new diversion, a company of horn-blowers, to be introduced; and then stretching himself out along the edge of a couch on a pile of pillows, “Make believe I am dead,” he ordered. “Play something fine.” Then the horn blowers struck up a loud funeral dirge. In particular one of these undertaker’s men, the most conscientious of the lot, blew so tremendous a fanfare he roused the whole neighbourhood. Hereupon the watchmen in charge of the surrounding district, thinking Trimalchio’s house was on fire, suddenly burst open the door, and rushing in with water and axes, started the much admired confusion usual under such circumstances. For our part, we seized the excellent opportunity thus offered, snapped our fingers in Agamemnon’s face, and away helter-skelter just as if we were escaping from a real conflagration.
1 The identity of the translator remains a mystery, but suspicion has fallen on one Alfred Richard Allinson – see Rod Boroughs, ‘Oscar Wilde’s Translation of Petronius: The Story of a Literary Hoax’, English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920, Vol 38, No. 1, 1995, pp. 9–49. The sense of mystery and fun that surrounds the origins of this translation feels very much in Petronius’ spirit.
THE ERUPTION OF VESUVIUS
Letters, 6.16
Pliny the Younger
Translated by Daisy Dunn, 2018
Most writers in antiquity believed that Mount Vesuvius was a mountain, or at most an extinct volcano. It had been dormant for around 700 years when, in AD 79, it erupted catastrophically. Thousands of people died at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and across the Bay of Naples. This is the account of a senator and lawyer named Pliny the Younger (AD c. 62–c. 113) who witnessed the eruption at the age of seventeen and survived it. Writing almost thirty years after the disaster, he describes in this letter to the historian Tacitus (see Stories 72 and 73) how his uncle, Pliny the Elder, an admiral and natural historian, launched a rescue operation but died at Stabiae, a town close to the volcano. He later wrote a second letter describing his own experience of the disaster.
You ask that I write to you of my uncle’s death so that you might pass the truth down to posterity. Thank you. For I can see that, if his death is recorded by you, then immortal glory is assured him. For although he died in an unforgettable disaster which destroyed the most beautiful parts of the earth, as well as cities and their people so, in a sense, he was bound to live on, and although he produced a great number of enduring works of his own, the inextinguishable nature of your writing may still do much to perpetuate his name. Lucky, I think, are those men with a god-given gift for doing what deserves to be written about or writing what deserves to be read – and very lucky are those who can do both. Through his own books and yours, my uncle will be one of these. I’m only too pleased to write this account, for in fact I’m eager for what you enjoin me to
do.
My uncle was at Misenum where he was commander of the imperial fleet. On 24 August, at around midday, my mother alerted him to a cloud, both strange and enormous in appearance. He had taken some sun, had a cold bath, lunched while reclining and was then at his studies; he called for his shoes and made his way up to a spot from which he could obtain the best view of the phenomenon. The cloud was too far away from where we were watching for us to be certain of which mountain it was rising from (it was afterwards known to be Vesuvius), but its shape was closest to that of an umbrella pine tree quite specifically. For it was raised high on a kind of very tall trunk and spread out into branches, I suppose because it was freshly pushed out by air and then weakened as the air subsided or, overcome by its own weight, filtered out across the sky, white one moment, dirty and grey-spotted the next through the earth or ash it bore. To a scholarly man like my uncle, it was obvious that, to understand more about it, he needed to get closer.
He gave orders for a galley to be fitted out; he asked if I wanted to come with him. I replied that I would prefer to study, for he himself happened to have given me something to write. He was on the point of leaving the house when he received a written message from Tascius’ wife Rectina, who feared imminent danger, for her villa lay beneath Vesuvius and there was no escape, except by boat. She urged him to rescue her from this grave situation. He changed his plan and what he had begun as an intellectual pursuit he completed with all he had. He had the quadriremes drawn up and embarked with the intention of bringing help not only to Rectina, but to many people, for the exquisite coast was highly populated. He pushed forward in the direction from which others were fleeing, and held course, steering straight into the danger zone, so fearless as he went that he described and noted down every movement, every shape of that evil thing, as it appeared before his eyes.
