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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
A great virtue of Petronius, it seems to me, is his ability to say everything simply, which makes his language appear healthy and in touch with the living, spoken language. The Satyricon is marked by casual simplicity or off-hand stylishness which we envy because it appears to have cost nothing to achieve. Though this simplicity is, I believe, the end product both of labor limae and ingenium, it is imbued with such confidence and maturity that it embraces the reader as naturally and perfectly as erotic rapture or coming to terms with one's mortality. Whatever Petronius intends for the Satyricon (if anything) or means for his reader to see (if anything), he is in complete control of its language: the coercive strength of his rhetoric encourages the adventurous reader to carry through to the end, even if some of the subject material is disturbing.
One of the last things J.P. Sullivan wrote on Petronius was ‘The Relevance of Modern Critical Approaches to the Roman Novel’, in J. Tatum & G. Vernazza (ed.), The Ancient Novel: Classical Paradigms and Modern Perspectives (Hanover NH 1990), 91-101. The editors wisely included Sullivan's whimsical but revealing ‘A Critical Map’ of studies on the Roman novel. The quotation in the title is from Sat. 107.15.
2. Tacitus Ann. 16.17–20; Bagnani, G., Arbiter of Elegance: A Study of the Life and Work of C. Petronius (Toronto 1954Google Scholar).
3. Crum, R., ‘Petronius and the Emperors’, CW 45 (1952), 161–67 and 197–201Google Scholar.
4. Cabaniss, A., Liturgy and Literature: Selected Essays (University, Alabama 1970), 72–96 and 152–60Google Scholar.
5. Klebs, E., ‘Zur Composition von Petronius’ Satirae’, Philologus 47 (1989), 623–35Google Scholar.
6. Heinze, R., ‘Petron und der griechische Roman’, Hermes 34 (1889), 494–519Google Scholar.
7. Stuckey, J., ‘Petronius the “Ancient”: His Reputation and Influence in Seventeenth Century England’, RSC 20 (1972), 145–53Google Scholar.
8. Eagleton, T., Literary Theory (Minneapolis 1983), 68ffGoogle Scholar.; Hirsch, E.D., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven 1967), 8Google Scholar.
9. Arrowsmith, W., ‘Luxury and Death in the Satyricon’, Arion 5 (1966), 304–31Google Scholar.
10. Sontag, S., ‘Against Interpretation’, in Against Interpretation (New York 1964), 314Google Scholar.
11. Hirsch (n. 8 above).
12. Slater, N., Reading Petronius (Baltimore 1990), 250Google Scholar.
13. Bowie, E.L. and Harrison, S.J., ‘The Romance of the Novel’, JRS 83 (1993), 159–78Google Scholar. A most insightful and witty appraisal.
14. Eagleton (n. 8 above), 74.
15. Sullivan, J.P., The Satyricon of Petronius: A Literary Study (London 1968), 119Google Scholar, gave us the first clear statement about indeterminacy and the text of the Satyricon in his comment about literary opportunism.
16. Reynolds, L.D. and Wilson, N.G., Scribes and Scholars 2 (Oxford 1974), 100Google Scholar, on florilegia: ‘…second-hand learning had come to stay.’
17. Bucheler, F., Petronii Saturae (Berlin 1958Google Scholar [many times reprinted]).
18. Manitius, M., Geschichte der lateinischen Literatur des Mittelalters, 3 vols. (Munich 1911-31Google Scholar).
19. Curtius, E., European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (New York 1953 [1948]), 49fGoogle Scholar., notes that among the curriculum authors studied in medieval schools and listed by Alexander Neckham dating from the end of the twelfth century, we find Petronius and Martial paired: ‘…both contain much that is useful, but likewise things unworthy the hearing.’
20. Martin, J., John of Salisbury and the Classics (Diss. Harvard 1968), 51–81Google Scholar (on Petronius). Cf. 80: ‘John’s interest in the Satyricon goes beyond mere edifying extracts to genuine appreciation of the narrative and the characters, especially Trimalchio.’
21. loannis Saresberiensis episcopi Carnotensis Policratici sive De nugis curialium et vestigiis philosophorum libri VIII, ed. Webb, Clement C.J., 2 vols. (Oxford 1909Google Scholar).
22. Curtius (n.19 above), 138–44.
23. Sullivan (n.15 above), 219ff.; Sandy, G., ‘Scaenica Petroniana’, TAPA 104 (1974), 329–46Google Scholar; Panayotakis, Costas, Theatrum Arbitri (Leiden 1995Google Scholar).
24. Auerbach, E., Mimesis (Princeton 1953), 30Google Scholar. For a more recent view of mimesis in the Satyricon, cf. Slater, N., ‘“Against Interpretation”: Petronius and Art Criticism’, Ramus 16 (1987), 165–76Google Scholar.
25. D’Arms, J., ‘The Typicality of Trimalchio’, in Commerce and Social Standing in Ancient Rome (Harvard 1981), 97–120CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a comprehensive and reliable view of the Realien in the Satyricon, cf. Bodel, J.P., Freedmen in the Satyricon of Petronius (Diss. Univ. of Michigan 1984Google Scholar).
26. Mansi, J.D. (ed.), Sacrorum Conciliorum Nova et Amplissima Collectio (Paris 1902Google Scholar), 33.230.
27. Stuckey (n.7 above).
28. Ovid, AA 3.122.
29. Schmeling, G., ‘T.S. Eliot and Petronius’, Comparative Literature Studies 12 (1975), 393–410Google Scholar.
30. Lecky, W.E.H., A History of European Morals (London 1911), i.215Google Scholar.
31. Letter of Lytton Strachey to Virginia Woolf, November 8, 1912: ‘Is it prejudice, do you think, that makes us hate the Victorians, or is it the truth of the case? They seem to me a set of mouthing, bungling hypocrites…. I would like to live for another 200 years (to be modest). The literature of the future will, I see clearly, be amazing…. To live in those days, when books will pour out from the press reeking with all the filth of Petronius.’ Letter of D.H. Lawrence to Lady Ottoline Morrell, 1 February 1916: ‘I send you also Petronius. He startled me at first, but I liked him. He is a gentleman when all is said…. Petronius is straight and above-board. Whatever he does, he doesn’t try to degrade and dirty the pure mind in him.’ For reference cf. Schmeling (n.29 above), 398f.
32. Schmeling (n.29 above), 398–408; Killeen, J.F., ‘James Joyce’s Roman Prototype’, Comparative Literature 9 (1957), 193–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
33. Schmeling (n.29 above).
34. Henninger, Manfred, Zeichnungen und Pastelle zum Satyricon von Petronius (Stuttgart: Galerie der Stadt Stuttgart, December 1979Google Scholar).
35. New York: Grove Press, 1966.
36. Cf. my forthcoming paper, ‘Confessor Gloriosus: A Role of Encolpius in the Satyricon’, WJA 20 (1994Google Scholar).
37. Cf. Sullivan (n.15 above), passim, and P.G. Walsh, , The Roman Novel (Cambridge 1970), 1–140Google Scholar.
38. Highet, G., ‘Petronius the Moralist’, TAPA 72 (1941), 176–94Google Scholar; Arrowsmith (n. 9 above).
39. Slater (n.24 above).
40. Cf. Hirsch (n.8 above), 44ff., and then Eagleton’s (n.8 above) attempt at rebuttal, 61–71. With profit the reader might also wish to look at Fowler, A., Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Harvard 1982Google Scholar), who is much more interested in interpretation than his title would lead us to believe; he makes a strong case for the links between genre and interpretation.
41. Sullivan (n.15 above), 90f., 100, 255, 262.
42. Sullivan (n.15 above), 119.
43. Zeitlin, F., ‘Petronius as Paradox: Anarchy and Artistic Integrity’, TAPA 102 (1971), 684Google Scholar.
44. Slater (n.12 above ), 250.
45. Slater (n. 12 above), 239.
46. Frye, N., Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton 1957Google Scholar), does not take into account the differences between fiction and non-fiction; cf. also Fowler (n.40 above), 119ff.
47. Slater (n.24 above), on paintings in the Satyricon.
48. Frye (n.46 above), 303–14.
49. Schmeling (n.36 above).
50. Sullivan (n.15 above), 36, 83. Barthes, R., The Pleasure of the Text (New York 1975Google Scholar), comments that the tendency of rhetoric is to resist closure and to extend play. On the episodic structure of the Satyricon, cf. Schmeling, G., ‘The Satyricon: The Sense of an Ending’, RhM 134 (1991), 352–77Google Scholar.
51. Frye (n.46 above), 249.
52. Hirsch (n.8 above), 81; Fowler (n.40 above), 36.
53. Fowler (n.40 above), 38.
54. Müller, C.W., ‘Die Witwe von Ephesus—Petrons Novelle und die “Milesiaka des Aristeides”’, A&A 26 (1980), 111Google Scholar, aptly labels this ‘Lust am Leben’.
55. A commonly cited example of syllepsis: ‘He spied on his wife with interest and a telescope.’
56. Joyce, J., Ulysses, ed. Gabler, H.W. (New York 1984), i.305Google Scholar.
57. Selden, D., ‘Genre of Genre’, in Tatum, J. (ed.), The Search for the Ancient Novel (Baltimore 1994), 51Google Scholar.
58. For an analysis of the structure of the tale of the Widow of Ephesus, cf. Schmeling (n.50 above).
59. Selden (n.57 above), 42.
60. J. Bodel, ‘Trimalchio’s Underworld’, in Tatum (n.57 above), 237–59. Does Claudius exit this earth to the afterlife via the Cloaca Maximal
61. The observations of Encolpius appear hackneyed and probably should be considered on a par intellectually with his statements about the quality of education made at the beginning of our extant Satyricon.
62. Cf. Slater (n.24 above).
63. Slater (n.24 above), n.20. Slater and I arrived independently at the same conclusion.
64. Schmeling, G., ‘Petronius 14.3: Shekels and Lupines’, Mnemosyne 45 (1992), 531–36CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
65. Leach, E., The Rhetoric of Space (Princeton 1988), 406Google Scholar, seems to see the artwork in 83.Iff. as genuine, speaking of a ‘higher level of culture…in the pinacotheca’.
66. Cf. Slater (n.12 above), 244.
67. It is possible that Trimalchio entertained the better elements of society; cf. Duncan-Jones, R., ‘Scaurus at the House of Trimalchio’, Latomus 32 (1973), 364–67Google Scholar. On Trimalchio’s position in society, cf. Bodel (n.25 above) and ‘Trimalchio and the Candelabrum’, CP 84 (1989), 224–31Google Scholar.
68. Paul Simon, Kodachrome. I owe this reference to Mailloux, Steven in Critical Terms for Literary Study (Chicago 1990), 121Google Scholar.
69. Cf. Schmeling (n.36 above).
70. Cf. Sullivan (n.15 above). The same comments can be made about Zeitlin (n.43 above).
71. Cf. Barthes (n.50 above).
72. Eagleton (n.8 above), 205ff., concludes that all literary criticism begins and ends with rhetoric.
73. I am thinking here of Winkler, J., Auctor & Actor: A Narratological Reading of Apu-leius’s The Golden Ass (Berkeley 1985Google Scholar).
