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Petronius Arbiter was a Roman writer of the Neronian age.
His own work, the Satirae, tells us nothing directly of his fortunes, position, or even century. Some lines of
Sidonius Apollinaris refer to him and are often taken to
imply that he lived and wrote at Marseilles. If, however, we accept the
identification of this author with the Petronius of Tacitus, Nero's courtier, we must suppose either that Marseilles was his birthplace or, as is more
likely, that Sidonius refers to the novel itself and that its scene was partly laid at Marseilles. The chief personages of the
story are evidently strangers in the towns of southern Italy where we find them. Their Greek-sounding names (Encolpius, Ascyltos,
Giton, etc.) and literary training accord with the characteristics of the old Greek colony in the 1st century AD. The high position
among Latin writers ascribed by Sidonius to Petronius, and the mention of him beside Menander by Macrobius, when compared with the absolute silence of
Quintilian, Juvenal and Martial, seem adverse to the opinion that the Satirae was a work of the age of Nero.
But Quintilian was concerned with writers who could be turned to use in the education of an orator. The silence of Juvenal and
Martial may be accidental or it is possible that a work so abnormal in form and substance was more highly prized by later
generations than by the author's contemporaries.
A comparison of the impression the book gives us of the character and genius of its author with the elaborate picture of the
courtier in Tacitus certainly suggests the identity of the two. Tacitus, it is true, mentions no important work as the
composition of his C. Petronius; such a work as the Satirae he may have regarded as beneath that dignity of history
which he so proudly realized. The care he gives to Petronius's portrait perhaps shows that the man enjoyed greater notoriety than
was due merely to the part he played in history.
"He spent his days in sleep, his nights in attending to his official duties or in amusement, by his dissolute life he had
become as famous as other men by a life of energy, and he was regarded as no ordinary profligate, but as an accomplished
voluptuary. His reckless freedom of speech, being regarded as frankness, procured him popularity. Yet during his provincial
governorship, and later when he held the office of consul, he had shown vigour and capacity for affairs. Afterwards returning to
his life of vicious indulgence, he became one of the chosen circle of Nero's intimates, and was looked upon as an absolute
authority on questions of taste (arbiter eleganliae) in connexion with the science of luxurious living"
Tacitus goes on to say that this excited the jealousy of Tigellinus, an
accusation followed, and Petronius committed suicide in a way that was in keeping
with his life and character. He selected the slow process of opening veins and having them bound up again, whilst he conversed on
light and trifling topics with his friends. He then dined luxuriously, slept for some time, and, so far from adopting the common
practice of flattering Nero or Tigellinus in his will, wrote and sent under seal to Nero a document which professed to give, with
the names of his partners, a detailed account of the abominations which that emperor had practised.
A fact confirmatory of the general truth of this graphic portrait is added by the elder Pliny, who mentions that just before his death he destroyed a valuable murrhine vase to prevent
its falling into the imperial hands. Do the traits of this picture agree with that impression of himself which the author of the
Satirae has left upon his work? That we possess therein part of the document sent to Nero is an impossible theory. Our
fragments profess to be extracts from the fifteenth and sixteenth books of the Satirae: Petronius could not have
composed one-tenth even of what we have in. the time in which he is said to have composed his memorial to Nero. We may be sure
too that the latter was very frank in its language, and treated Nero with far greater severity than the Banquet treats
Trimalchio. On the other hand, it is clear that the creator of Trimalchio, Encolpius and Giton had the experience, the
inclinations and the literary gifts which would enable him to describe with forcible mockery the debaucheries of Nero. And the
impression of his personality does in another respect correspond closely with the Petronius of the Annals--in the union
of immoral sensualism with a rich vein of cynical humour and admirable taste.
The style of the work, where it does not purposely reproduce the solecisms and colloquialisms of the vulgar rich, is of the
purest Latin of the Silver ages. Nor
would there be any point in the verses on the capture of Troy and the Civil War
at any other era than that in which Nero's Troica and Lucan's Pharsalia
were fashionable poems. The reciting poet indeed is a feature of a later age also, as we learn from Martial and Juvenal. But we
know from Tacitus that the luxury of the table, so conspicuous in Trimalchio's Banquet, fell out of fashion after Nero (Ann. 3.
55).
Of the work itself there have been preserved 141 sections of a narrative, in the main consecutive, although interrupted by
frequent gaps. The name Satirae, given in the best manuscripts, implies that it belongs to the type to which Varro, imitating the Greek Menippus, had given the
character of a medley of prose and verse composition. But the string of fictitious narrative by which the medley is held together
is something quite new in Roman literature. This careless prodigal was so happily inspired in his devices for amusing himself as
to introduce to Rome and thereby transmit to modern times the novel based on the ordinary experience of contemporary life--the
precursor of such novels as Gil Blas and Roderick Random. There is no evidence of the existence of a regular
plot in the fragments, but we find one central figure, Encolpius, who professes to narrate his adventures and describe all that
he saw and heard, whilst allowing various other personages to exhibit their peculiarities and express their opinions
dramatically.
The fragment opens with the appearance of the hero, Encolpius, who seems to be an itinerant lecturer travelling with a
companion named Ascyltos and a boy Giton, in a portico of a Greek town, in Campania. An admirable lecture on the false taste in literature, resulting from the prevailing system of
education, is replied to by a rival declaimer, Agamemno, who shifts the blame from the teachers to the parents. The central
personages of the story next go through a series of questionable adventures, in the course of which they are involved in a charge
of robbery. A day or two after they are present at a dinner given by a freedman of enormous wealth, Trimalchio, who entertained
with ostentatious and grotesque extravagance a number of men of his own rank but less prosperous. We listen to the ordinary talk
of the guests about their neighbours, about the weather, about the hard times, about the public games, about the education of
their children. We recognize in an extravagant form the same kind of vulgarity and pretension which the satirist of all times
delights to expose in the illiterate and ostentatious millionaires of the age. Next day Encolpius separates from his companions
in a fit of jealousy, and, after two or three days' sulking and brooding on his revenge, enters a picture gallery, where he meets
with an old poet, who, after talking sensibly on the decay of art and the inferiority of the painters of the age to the old
masters, proceeds to illustrate a picture of thu capture of Troy by some verses on that theme. This ends in those who are walking
in the adjoining colonnade driving him out with stones. The scene is next on board ship, where Encolpius finds he has fallen into
the hands of some old enemies. They are shipwrecked, and Encolpius, Giton and the old poet get to shore in the neighbourhood of
Crotona, where, as the inhabitants are notorious fortune-hunters, the adventurers set
up as men of fortune. The fragment ends with a new set of questionable adventures, in which prominent parts are played by a
beautif ul enchantress named Circe, a priestess of Priapus, and a certain matron who leaves them her heirs, but attaches a
condition to the inheritance which even Encolpius might have shrunk from fulfilling. If we can suppose the author of this work to
have been animated by any other motive than the desire to amuse himself, it might be that of convincing himself that the world in
general was as bad as he was himself. Juvenal and Swift are justly
regarded as among the very greatest of satirists, and their estimate of human nature is perhaps nearly as unfavourable as that of
Petronius; but their attitude towards human degradation is not one of complacent amusement; their realism is the realism of
disgust, not, like that of Petronius, a realism of sympathy. Martial does not gloat over the vices of which he writes with
cynical frankness. He is perfectly aware that they are vices, and that the reproach of them is the worst that can be cast on any
one. And, further, Martial, with all his faults, is, in his affections, his tastes, his relations to others, essentially human,
friendly, generous, true. There is perhaps not a single sentence in Petronius which implies any knowledge of or sympathy with the
existence of affection, conscience or honour, or even the most elementary goodness of heart.
For the whole question of possible predecessors and Petronius's relation to the extant Greek romances see W Schmid, "Der
griechische Roman" in Jahrbücher far das klass. Altertum, etc. (1904). One would certainly have expected the realistic
tendency which appears in the New Comedy, the Characters of Theophrastus and the Mimes, to have borne this
fruit before the first century of our era.
Fake quotation
The following quotation, or variants of it, is frequently attributed to
Petronius:
"We trained hard . . . but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we would be reorganized. I was to
learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the
illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization."
However admirable the sentiment, this quotation is not of Petronius; the earliest reference to it dates only
to 1970. The true author is unknown.
See also
Reference
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