Petilianus

“ Chapter 103.—234. Petilianus said: "Imitate indeed the prophets, who feared to have their holy souls deceived with false baptism. For Jeremiah says of old that among impious men water is as one that lies. ”

“ Petilianus said: "For we, as it is written, when we are baptized, put on Christ who was betrayed; [1] you, when you are infected, put on Judas the betrayer."
104. Augustin answered: I also might say, You when you are infected put on Optatus the betrayer, the robber, the oppressor, the separater of husband and wife; but far be it from me that the desire of returning an evil word should provoke me into any falsehood: for neither do you put on Optatus, nor we Judas. ”

“ By what means is a man to be cleansed who receives baptism while he is ignorant of the stain upon the conscience of him that gives but not in holiness? for this conscience of him that gives, or of him that gives in holiness, Petilianus wishes to be the origin, root, head, seed, tree from which the sanctification of the baptized has its existence,—springs, begins, sprouts forth, is born. ”

“ Why do we both suffer and cause unnecessary delay? Are we likely to find out by such a course as this what means we are to use for cleansing the conscience of the recipient, who does not know that the conscience of the giver is stained with guilt? whence the man is to receive faith who is unwittingly baptized by one that is faithless?—the question which Petilianus had proposed to himself to answer in my epistle, then going on to say anything else he pleased except what the matter in hand required. ”

“ For you bring an accusation against the whole world on account of the sins of others, though even those others themselves you were more able to accuse than to convict; and you abode not in the truth of Christ. For He says that the Church is "throughout all nations, beginning at Jerusalem;" but ye say that it is in the party of Donatus.
Chap. xiv.—31. Petilianus said: "In the third place, also, He calls the madness of persecutors in like manner by this name, 'Ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell? Wherefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes ”

“ Peter’s and the high precinct you approach by the gate just beyond Villa Medici—counting nothing else—is a proof that if in Rome you may suffer from ennui, at least your ennui has a throbbing soul in it. It is something to say for the Pincio that you don’t always choose St. Peter’s. Sometimes I lose patience with its parade of eternal idleness, but at others this very idleness is balm to one’s conscience. Life on just these terms seems so easy, so monotonously sweet, that you feel it would be unwise, would be really unsafe, to change. ”

“ If this is not great poetry, it is at least one of the most perfect specimens of conventional erotic verse in all ancient literature. If we except a very few of the best poems of Propertius, Latin Elegiacs have nothing to show that combines such perfection of form with such exquisite sensuous charm. It breathes the fragrance of the Greek anthology.
The general impression left by the poetical work of Petronius is curiously unlike that left by any Latin poet. Sometimes dull, he is never eccentric; without the originality of the greatest artists, he has all the artist's sensibility for form. ”

“ There is no doubt that Petronilla was buried in close proximity to this cubiculum. The story of her relationship to S. Peter has no foundation whatever; it rests on an etymological mistake, by which the name Petronilla is treated as a diminutive of Petrus, as is Plautilla of Plautius or Plautia, and Domitilla of Domitius or Domitia. Petrus is not a Latin name; it came into use with the spreading of the gospel, and only in rare and exceptional cases. The young martyr was named after a member of the same Flavian family to which this cemetery belonged, Titus Flavius Petron, an uncle of Vespasian. ”

“ The tradition of the peculiarly Petrine origin of the Roman See, and hence its claim as of divine right to supremacy, having come by this time to be accepted in the West, the undoubted ancient jurisdiction, independently of Rome, of the great patriarchal sees of the East in their own regions, had to be accounted for in accordance with this theory: and hence they too were regarded as deriving their authority from St. Peter. Accordingly we do not find Gregory in any of his letters to the patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch addressing them in a tone of command. ”

“ He was wealthy and reckless, and he had made himself a leader of fashion among the young Roman nobles. With them was the brilliant Petronius Arbiter, a man of refined culture and natural wit, but the most cynically shameless liver and talker even in Rome. The group was completed by the able and rough-tongued but not over-scrupulous Vestinus, the dissolute Quintianus, and the singularly handsome Tigellinus, who was as yet only at the beginning of his career, but who, of all the minions of that foul Court, became the most cruel, the most treacherous, and the most corrupt. ”

“ PETRONIUS was a Roman knight, and apparently of considerable fortune. In his youth he seems to have given great application to polite literature, in which he acquired a justness of taste, as well as an elegance of composition. Early initiated in the gaieties (393) of fashionable life, he contracted a habit of voluptuousness which rendered him an accommodating companion to the dissipated and the luxurious. The court of Claudius, entirely governed for some time by Messalina, was then the residence of pleasure; and here Petronius failed not of making a conspicuous appearance. ”

“ And he began to think that a society resting on superior force, on cruelty of which even barbarians had no conception, on crimes and mad profligacy, could not endure. Rome ruled the world, but was also its ulcer. The odor of a corpse was rising from it. Over its decaying life the shadow of death was descending. More than once this had been mentioned even among the Augustians, but never before had Petronius had a clearer view of this truth that the laurelled chariot on which Rome stood in the form of a triumphator, and which dragged behind a chained herd of nations, was going to the precipice. ”

“ It should be remembered, however, that there was a tradition of immorality about the ancient romance,746 and Petronius, had he cared to do so, might have made the same apology as Martial, that he provided what his readers demanded.747 That Petronius was deeply tainted is only too probable from his associations, although Tacitus implies that he was rather a fastidious voluptuary than a gross debauchee. Yet a sensualist of the intellectual range of Petronius may have occasionally visions of a better world than that to which he has sunk. ”

“ If St Paul's epistle to the Ephesians be genuine, and it were really known to the writer of 1 Peter, and if Peter were martyred in 64, the theory of Petrine authorship demands that it was written by Peter between 59 and 64. On the Petrine hypothesis this is the most probable view. The weak point is that it assumes a great spread of Christianity in the provinces of Asia Minor outside the activity of Paul, and that the official persecution of Christians as such began throughout the Roman Empire under Nero, for neither of which is there corroborative evidence. ”

“ Now surely in this motive of fear, thus remedied by exact ritual, we may trace a true civilizing element—the idea of Duty, Pietas, which as Cicero defined it, was ‘iustitia erga deos’: righteous dealing towards the gods, in expectation of righteous treatment on their part. And he would be a bold man who should assert that ‘iustitia erga deos’ had no effect in inducing the habit of ‘iustitia erga homines’: in other words that it could not react upon conduct. In the pietas of the one typical Roman in literature both these elements are equally present. ”

“ Petulengro say that to be cast into the earth is the natural end of man.’ ‘Who is Mr. Petulengro?’ said Peter, interrupting his wife, as she was about to speak. ‘Master of the horse-shoe,’ said I; ‘and, according to his own account, king of Egypt.’ ‘I understand,’ said Peter, ‘head of some family of wandering Egyptians—they are a race utterly godless. Art thou of them?—but no, thou art not, thou hast not their yellow blood. ”

“ At a cost of much labor we have been able to decipher a morsel which we give to the public: and of the authenticity of which there can be no doubt. We render homage to the brave French army to which we owe this acquisition.
It is easy to notice that there is a lacuna in that passage of Petronius in which Encolpius is left with Quartilla, looking through a chink in the door, at the actions of Giton and little Pannychis. ”

“ This careful armor, these verses plated with enamel and studded with jewels, captivated him, but the exclusive preoccupation with form, the sonorities of tone, the clangor of metals, did not entirely conceal from him the emptiness of the thought, the turgidity of those blisters which emboss the skin of the Pharsale.
Petronius was the author whom he truly loved and who caused him forever to abandon the sonorous ingenuities of Lucan, for he was a keen observer, a delicate analyst, a marvelous painter. ”

“ No, no, Petillius, no.
Petill. If your mind serve ye,
Ye may live still; but how? yet pardon me,
You may outwear all too, but when? and certain
There is a mercy for each fault, if tamely
A man will take't upon conditions.
Pen. No, by no means: I am only thinking now, Sir,
(For I am resolved to go) of a most base death,
Fitting the baseness of my fault. I'll hang.
Petill. Ye shall not; y'are a Gentleman I honor,
I would else flatter ye, and force ye live,
Which is far baser. Hanging? 'tis a dogs death,
An end for slaves. ”

“ Petill. Your leave, Sir,
And I beseech ye note me; for I love ye,
And bring [along] all comfort: Are we gods,
Alli'd to no infirmities? are our natures
More than mens natures? when we slip a little
Out of the way of virtue, are we lost?
Is there no medicine called Sweet mercy?
Pen. None, Petillius;
There is no mercy in mankind can reach me,
Nor is it fit it should; I have sinn'd beyond it.
Petill. Forgiveness meets with all faults.
Pen. 'Tis all faults,
All sins I can commit, to be forgiven:
'Tis loss of whole man in me, my discretion
To be so stupid, to arrive at pardon. ”

“ Considered merely as a historian, whether, as regards means of knowledge, or tests of truthfulness, by every unprejudiced mind, Peter will always be preferred to Pliny. But because the world will ever love its own, and hate the disciples of the Lord, there will always be a large class to whom the history of Tacitus will seem more veritable than that of Luke, and the letters of Pliny more reliable than those of Peter. For their sakes we avail ourselves of that most convincing of all attestations—the testimony of an enemy. What friends and foes unite in attesting must be accepted as true. ”

“ Are those come in yet that pursu'd bold Caratach?
Pet. Not yet Sir, for I think they mean to lodge him;
Take him I know they dare not, 'twill be dangerous.
Swet. Then haste Petillius, haste to Penyus,
I fear the strong conceit of what disgrace
Has pull'd upon himself, will be his ruine:
I fear his soldiers fury too; haste presently,
I would not lose him for all Britain. Give him, Petillius.
Petill. That that shall choak him.
Swet. All the noble counsell,
His fault forgiven too, his place, his honor,
Petill. ”

“ It is necessary to see in Petronius the abominable role which the “obscene gladiator” played; but the Latin itself is clear enough to describe all the secrets of the Roman debauch. “For some women,” says Petronius, in another passage, “will only kindle for canaille and cannot work up an appetite unless they see some slave or runner with his clothing girded up: a gladiator arouses one, or a mule driver, all covered with dust, or some actor posturing in some exhibition on the stage. ”

“ We might conjecture that the chief gift to which Petronius owed his social and his literary success was that of humorous mimicry. In Trimalchio and his various guests, in the old poet, in the cultivated, depraved and moody Encolpius, in the Chrysis, Quartilla, Polyaenis, &c., we recognize in living examples the play of those those various appetites, passions and tendencies which satirists deal with as abstract qualities. Another gift he possesses in a high degree, which must have availed him in society as well as in literature—the gift of story-telling ”

“ What labour would it cost them to put in a better line, than the worst of those which they expunge in a true poet? Petronius, the greatest wit perhaps of all the Romans, yet when his envy prevailed upon his judgment to fall on Lucan, he fell himself in his attempt; he performed worse in his "Essay of the Civil War" than the author of the "Pharsalia;" and, avoiding his errors, has made greater of his own. ”

“ Petronius ordered to admit the guest to the tepidarium, to which he was borne himself. Vinicius was the son of his oldest sister, who years before had married Marcus Vinicius, a man of consular dignity from the time of Tiberius. The young man was serving then under Corbulo against the Parthians, and at the close of the war had returned to the city. Petronius had for him a certain weakness bordering on attachment, for Marcus was beautiful and athletic, a young man who knew how to preserve a certain aesthetic measure in his profligacy; this, Petronius prized above everything. ”

“ Be content if they grind evenly, and don't thrust your hand between them."
"'I?" said Allo. "I hate Rome and the Winged Hats equally; but if the Winged Hats thought that some day you and Pertinax might join them against Maximus, they would leave you in peace while you considered. Time is what we need—you and I and Maximus. Let me carry a pleasant message back to the Winged Hats—something for them to make a council over. We barbarians are all alike. We sit up half the night to discuss anything a Roman says. Eh?"
"'We have no men. We must fight with words," said Pertinax. ”