Petronius Arbiter

“ She was the selfsame young lady of the covered head who had but a little while before stood by the peasant's side. "So you thought," said she, "that you could make a fool of me, did you? I am Quartilla's handmaid: Quartilla, whose rites you interrupted in the shrine. She has come to the inn, in person, and begs permission to speak with you. Don't be alarmed! She neither blames your mistake nor does she demand punishment; on the contrary, she wonders what god has brought such well-bred young gentlemen into her neighborhood!" ”

“ Affairs were at this pass, and we were framing melancholy excuses with which to evade the coming revel, when a slave of Agamemnon's burst in upon our trembling conclave and said, "Don't you know with whom your engagement is today? The exquisite Trimalchio, who keeps a clock and a liveried bugler in his dining-room, so that he can tell, instantly, how much of his life has run out!" Forgetting all our troubles at that, we dressed hurriedly and ordered Giton, who had very willingly performed his servile office, to follow us to the bath. ”

“ When the diplomatic thunderstorm had passed over, she withdrew her haughty head from her mantle and, ringing her hands until the joints cracked, "What is the meaning of such audacity?" she demanded; "where did you learn such tricks? They are worthy of putting to shame the assurance of all the robbers of the past! I pity you, so help me the God of Truth, I do; for no one can look with impunity upon that which it is unlawful for him to see. In our neighborhood, there are so many gods that it is easier to meet one than it is to find a man! ”

“ Shunning the public roads; we could not rest until we believed ourselves safe from pursuit. Ascyltos, when he had caught his breath, gloatingly exulted of the pleasure which the looting of a villa belonging to Lycurgus, a superlatively avaricious man, afforded him: he complained, with justice of his parsimony, affirming that he himself had received no reward for his k-nightly services, that he had been kept at a dry table and on a skimpy ration of food. This Lycurgus was so stingy that he denied himself even the necessities of life, his immense wealth to the contrary notwithstanding. ”

“ In a few words I told Ascyltos of the robbery, when he joined us, and of our unfortunate love-affairs as well. He was for prepossessing the mind of Lycurgus in our favor, naming the increasing wantonness of Lycas as the cause of our secret and sudden change of habitation. When Lycurgus had heard everything, he swore that he would always be a tower of strength between us and our enemies. Until Tryphaena and Doris were awake and out of bed, our flight remained undiscovered, for we paid them the homage of a daily attendance at the morning toilette. ”

“ By Hercules, you are much more deserving of censure than I, you who will flatter a poet so as to get an invitation to dinner!" Then we laughed ourselves out of a most disgraceful quarrel, and approached more peaceably whatever remained to be done. But the remembrance of that injury recurred to my mind and, "Ascyltos," I said, "I know we shall not be able to agree, so let us divide our little packs of common stock and try to defeat our poverty by our individual efforts. ”

“ He was certain that contempt would be engendered from the inconstancy of my "sister," with the result that, being piqued at Tryphaena, I would all the more freely receive his advances. Now this was the state of affairs at the house of Lycas, Tryphaena was desperately in love with Giton, Giton's whole soul was aflame for her, neither of them was a pleasing sight to my eyes, and Lycas, studying to please me, arranged novel entertainments each day, which Doris, his lovely wife, seconded to the best of her ability, and so gracefully that she soon expelled Tryphaena from my heart. ”

“ By this, the Roman created a new style of writing and inaugurated a class of literature which was without parallel until the time of Apuleius and, in a lesser degree, of Lucian. This class of literature, though modified essentially from age to age, in keeping with the dictates of moral purity or bigotry, innocent or otherwise, has come to be the very stuff of which literary success in fiction is made. One may write a successful book without a thread of romance; one cannot write a successful romance without some knowledge of realism ”

“ We were just about to emerge from the shelter of the wood when we heard, from somewhere on our left, "They can't get away, they came into this wood; let's spread out and beat, and they will easily be caught!" On hearing this, we were thrown into such a terrible fright that Ascyltos and Giton dashed away city-ward, through the underbrush, and I retreated in such a hurry that the precious tunic slipped off my shoulders without my knowing it. At last, completely fagged out, and unable to take another step, I lay down under a tree, and there I first became aware of the loss of the tunic. ”

“ The parents who are unwilling to permit their children to undergo a course of training under strict discipline, are the ones who deserve the reproof. In the first place, everything they possess, including the children, is devoted to ambition. Then, that their wishes may the more quickly be realized, they drive these unripe scholars into the forum, and the profession of eloquence, than which none is considered nobler, devolves upon boys who are still in the act of being born! ”

“ Ascyltos was, for the moment, struck dumb by this admission of Quartilla's, and I turned colder than a Gallic winter, and could not utter a word; but the personnel of the company relieved me from the fear that the worst might be yet to come, for they were only three young women, too weak to attempt any violence against us, who were of the male sex, at least, even if we had nothing else of the man about us, and this was an asset. Then, too, we were girded higher, and I had so arranged matters that if it came to a fight, I would engage Quartilla myself, Ascyltos the maid, and Giton the girl. ”

“ Lycas flew into a towering rage when our flight was established for certain, and railed bitterly at Doris, whom he considered as the moving factor in it. Of the hard words and the beating he gave her I will say nothing, for the particulars are not known to me, but I will affirm that Tryphaena, who was the sole cause of the unpleasantness, persuaded Lycas to hunt for his fugitives in the house of Lycurgus, which was our most probable sanctuary. ”

“ We would have cried aloud in our misery but there was no one to give us any help, and whenever I attempted to shout, "Help! all honest citizens," Psyche would prick my cheeks with her hairpin, and the little girl would intimidate Ascyltos with a brush dipped in satyrion. Then a catamite appeared, clad in a myrtle-colored frieze robe, and girded round with a belt. ”

“ I am more moved by your age than I am by my own injury, for it is my belief that youthful imprudence led you into committing a sacrilegious crime. That very night, I tossed so violently in the throes of a dangerous chill that I was afraid I had contracted a tertian ague, and in my dreams I prayed for a medicine. ”

“ I groaned, "if you have anything worse in store, bring it on quickly for we have not committed a crime so heinous as to merit death by torture." The maid, whose name was Psyche, quickly spread a blanket upon the floor (and) sought to secure an erection by fondling my member, which was already a thousand times colder than death. Ascyltos, well aware by now of the danger of dipping into the secrets of others, covered his head with his mantle. (In the meantime,) the maid took two ribbons from her bosom and bound our feet with one and our hands with the other. ”

“ But you won't get off unpunished You and that lover of yours are going to find out that I'm a man!" At the soldier's orders, his companion bound Quartilla and myself together, mouth to mouth, breast to breast, and thigh to thigh; and not without a great deal of laughter. ”

“ With affairs in this posture, I follow my love, but Lycurgus, who had renewed his old relations with Ascyltos, would not permit him to leave, so it was decided that he should remain with Lycurgus, but that we would accompany Lycas. Nevertheless, we had it understood among ourselves that whenever the opportunity presented itself, we would each pilfer whatever we could lay hands upon, for the betterment of the common stock. ”

“ If, however, they would permit a graded course of study to be prescribed, in order that studious boys might ripen their minds by diligent reading; balance their judgment by precepts of wisdom, correct their compositions with an unsparing pen, hear at length what they ought to imitate, and be convinced that nothing can be sublime when it is designed to catch the fancy of boys, then the grand style of oratory would immediately recover the weight and splendor of its majesty. ”

“ And, as designing parasites, when they seek invitations to the tables of the rich, have in mind nothing except what will, in their opinion, be most acceptable to their audience --for in no other way can they secure their ends, save by setting snares for the ears--so it is with the teachers of rhetoric, they might be compared with the fisherman, who, unless he baits his hook with what he knows is most appetizing to the little fish, may wait all day upon some rock, without the hope of a catch. ”

“ Ascyltos, when he had secured silence, adroitly put a stop to their laughter by exclaiming, "We can see that each puts the greater value upon his own property. Let them return our tunic to us, and take back their mantle!" ”

“ Even these heroics could be endured if they made easier the road to eloquence; but as it is, their sole gain from this ferment of matter and empty discord of words is, that when they step into the Forum, they think they have been carried into another world. And it is my conviction that the schools are responsible for the gross foolishness of our young men, because, in them, they see or hear nothing at all of the affairs of every-day life, but only pirates standing in chains upon the shore, tyrants scribbling edicts in which sons are ordered to behead their own fathers ”

“ In the summer, times are bad in the city. The country is luckier, let's go and visit our friends." Necessity compelled the approval of this plan, and the repression of any sense of injury as well, so, loading Giton with our packs, we left the city and hastened to the country-seat of Lycurgus, a Roman knight. Inasmuch as Ascyltos has formerly served him in the capacity of "brother," he received us royally, and the company there assembled, rendered our stay still more delightful. ”

“ The ancients gave little attention to this; the man, with them, was the important thing; the environment the unimportant. There are, of course, exceptions; the interview between Ulysses and Nausiskaa is probably the most striking. From the standpoint of environment, Petronius, in the greater portion of his work, is an ancient; but one exception there is, and it is as brilliant as it is important. The entire episode, in which Trimalchio figures, offers an incredible abundance of details. ”

“ Those who are brought up on such a diet can no more attain to wisdom than a kitchen scullion can attain to a keen sense of smell or avoid stinking of the grease. With your indulgence, I will speak out: you--teachers--are chiefly responsible for the decay of oratory. With your well modulated and empty tones you have so labored for rhetorical effect that the body of your speech has lost its vigor and died. Young men did not learn set speeches in the days when Sophocles and Euripides were searching for words in which to express themselves. ”

“ Petronius must be credited with the great merit of having introduced realism into the novel. By an inspiration of genius, he saw that the framework of frivolous and licentious novels could be enlarged until it took in contemporary custom and environment. It is that which assures for him an eminent place, not in Roman literature alone, but in the literature of the world.
a--INFLUENCE OF THE SATYRICON UPON LITERATURE. The vagrant heroes of Petronius are the originals from whom directly, or indirectly, later authors drew that inspiration which resulted in the great mass of picaresque fiction ”

“ Ascyltos made no objection to this, but merely remarked, "As we, in our capacity of scholars, have accepted an invitation to dinner, for this date, let us not lose our night. Since it seems to be the graceful thing to do, I will look out for another lodging and another 'brother,' tomorrow." "Deferred pleasures are a long time coming," I sighed. It was lust that made this separation so hasty, for I had, for a long time, wished to be rid of a troublesome chaperon, so that I could resume my old relations with my Giton. ”

“ The merit of our modern realists lies in the fact that they have studied the things which surround us and our relations to them, and thus have they been able to make their creations conform to human experience. ”

“ But eternal life means endless change and in nothing is this truth more strikingly manifest than in the growth and decadence of living languages and in the translation of dead tongues into the ever changing tissue of the living. Were it not for this, no translation worthy of the name would ever stand in need of revision, except in instances where the discovery and collation of fresh manuscripts had improved the text. In the case of an author whose characters speak in the argot proper to their surroundings, the necessity for revision is even more imperative ”

“ Nineteen centuries have gone their way since this novel was written, but if we look about us we will be able to recognize, under the veneer of civilization, the originals of the Satyricon and we will find that here, in a little corner of the Roman world, all humanity was held in miniature. ”