Petronius Maximus

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I began.
"'In War it is as it is in Love," said Pertinax. "Whether she be good or bad, one gives one's best once, to one only. That given, there remains no second worth giving or taking."
"'That is true," said Ambrosius. "I was with Maximus before he died. He warned Theodosius that you would never serve him, and frankly I say I am sorry for my Emperor."
"'He has Rome to console him," said Pertinax. ”

“ As he thus advanced boldly the people showed him neither aversion nor favour; but he was encouraged by the love of sudden novelty, which is implanted in the minds of most of the common people, and was further excited by the knowledge that all men unanimously detested Petronius, who, as I have said before, was accumulating riches by all kinds of violence, reviving actions that had long been buried, and oppressing all ranks with the exaction of forgotten debts. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I am not (so help me Hercules) quickly angry, yet worms are bred even in tender flesh. He laughs! what has he to laugh at? what wooll did his father give for the bantling? Is he a Roman knight? I am the son of a king. How came I then, you'll say, to serve another? I did it of my self, and had rather be a citizen of Rome, than a tributary king, and now hope to live so, as to be no man's jeast. I walk like other men, with an open face, and can shew my head among the best, for I owe no man a groat ”

“ 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. ”

“ An additional stimulus to his ferocity was the emperor's father-in-law, Petronius, who, from the command of the Martensian cohort, had been suddenly promoted to be a patrician. He was a man deformed both in mind and appearance, and cruelly eager to plunder every person without distinction; torturing all, guilty and innocent, and then binding them with fourfold bonds; exacting debts due as far back as the time of the emperor Aurelian, and grieving if any one escaped without loss. ”

“ Quartilla you will hardly escape, or Tryphœna either; Fortunata will pester you with her invitations, and, if you visit the National Gallery (though I hear they intend, now, to close it) or the Turkish Baths, you must beware of Eumolpus: while if the others cross your path by night you will do well to bear in mind the warning given to an earlier poet by a greater Roman even than Petronius:
Questi non hanno speranza di morte,
E la lor cieca vita e tanto bassa,
Che invidiosi son d'ogni altra sorte. ”

“ We commonly conceive the P-th-c’s Part disagreeable; But Petronius, whose Experience is hardly questionable, represents him sharing in the accurst Rapture. This Master of the Pleasures to Nero introduces a P-th-c, who, over and over enj-y’d urges on the detestable Lewdness. All the Story is so high Colour’d, and Strikes with such strong Delineation, I shall present it to the Reader. It is related by Eumolpus, (a Soldier turn’d Poet,) as happening to himself. ”

“ It seems to be my destiny to feed you whenever we meet. I have food here. Allo shall cook it."
"'No," said Allo. "A Prince in his own land does not wait on wandering Emperors. I feed my two children without asking your leave." He began to blow up the ashes.
"'I was wrong," said Pertinax. "We are all mad. Speak up, O Madman called Emperor!"
'Maximus smiled his terrible tight-lipped smile, but two years on the Wall do not make a man afraid of mere looks. So I was not afraid.
"'I meant you, Parnesius, to live and die a Centurion of the Wall," said Maximus. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Petronius, I say, thought it much better to send to Caius, and to let him know how intolerable it was to him to bear the anger he might have against him for not serving him sooner, in obedience to his epistle, for that perhaps he might persuade him; and that if this mad resolution continued, he might then begin the war against them; nay, that in case he should turn his hatred against himself, it was fit for virtuous persons even to die for the sake of such vast multitudes of men. ”

“ Petronius shows us a state of morals at which a commonplace devil would blush, in the midst of a society more intellectually cultivated than certainly was that which produced Regulus or the Horatii. And the most learned eras in modern Italy were precisely those which brought the vices into the most ghastly refinement. ”

“ See how the habit of playing for time sticks to a man!" said Pertinax, as he tied the rope.
"'No," I said. "Time may help. If Maximus wrote us a letter while he was a prisoner, Theodosius must have sent the ship that brought it. If he can send ships, he can send men."
"'How will that profit us?" said Pertinax. "We serve Maximus, not Theodosius. Even if by some miracle of the Gods Theodosius down South sent and saved the Wall, we could not expect more than the death Maximus died." ”

“ 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. ”

“ In his preface, dedicated to the Army of the Rhine, he states that he found the fragment in a manuscript of the work of St. Gennadius on the Duties of Priests, probably of the XI Century. A close examination revealed the fact that it was a palimpsest which, after treatment, permitted the restoration of this fragment. It is supposed to supply the gap in Chapter 26 after the word “verberabant.”
Its obscenity outrivals that of the preceding text, and the grammar, style, and curiosa felicitas Petroniana make it an almost perfect imitation. There is no internal evidence of forgery. ”

“ I have sent her with a fitting escort, for she is the mother of a hero, to Nicæa, where the climate is warm.’
‘“That is proof!” said Pertinax. “Nicæa is not far by sea from Rome. A woman there could take ship and fly to Rome in time of war. Yes, Maximus foresees his death, and is fulfilling his promises one by one. But I am glad my Uncle met him.”
‘“You think blackly to-day?” I asked.
‘“I think truth. The Gods weary of the play we have played against them. Theodosius will destroy Maximus. ”

“ If we can assume that this stage of development was reached before the time of Petronius we can think of his novel as a parody of such a romance. If, however, the bourgeois romance had not appeared before 50 A.D., then, if we regard his story as a parody of a prose narrative, it must be a parody of such an heroic romance as that of Ninos, or a parody of the longer heroic romances which developed out of the rhetorical narrative. If excavations in Egypt or at Herculaneum should bring to light a serious bourgeois story of adventure, they would furnish us the missing link. ”

“ Certain it is that Petrarch possessed an immense attraction for almost every type of mind and character. He must indeed have been a man of infinite charm. He was the friend of kings, scholars, Popes, princes, soldiers, statesmen. He ardently championed the cause of Rienzi, and of the Emperor Charles IV.; for the idea of keeping up the succession of the Holy Roman Empire appealed powerfully to his imagination, and when that monarch gave up his campaign before he had made good his imperial claims on Italy, Petrarch wrote bitterly reproaching him for abandoning so sacred a heritage. ”

“ The theory that Petronius may have had the composition of his Satirae suggested to him by plays of this type is greatly strengthened by the fact that the mime reached its highest point of popularity at the court in the time of Nero, in whose reign Petronius lived. In point of fact Petronius refers to the mime frequently. One of these passages is of peculiar significance in this connection. Encolpius and his comrades are entering the town of Croton and are considering what device they shall adopt so as to live without working. ”

“ On our side Eumolpus's slave distributed the instruments of his trade, and reserv'd a razor to defend his own person; on the other, Tryphœna and her attendants advanc'd, armed with nothing but their nails and tongues; which last supply'd the want of drums in their army; when the pilot, crying out, threaten'd he wou'd leave the ship to the mercy of the waves if they continued the bustle rais'd about the lust of two or three vagabonds.
This did not in the least retard the fight; they pressing for revenge, we for our lives: in short, many fell half dead on both sides ”

“ When the king was preparing to march his Persian army against Athens, Hermotimus was at Sardis, having gone down at that time, upon some business or other, to the Mysian territory which the Chians possess, and is called Atarneus, he there met with Panionius. Having recognized him, he addressed many friendly words to him, first recounting the many advantages he had acquired by this means, and secondly, promising him how many favors he would confer upon him in requital, if he would bring his family and settle there ”