Petronius

“ Art thou concerned as much as ever about this Lygia?”
Vinicius stopped a moment, and looked at Petronius as if he had not seen him before; then he began to walk again. It was evident that he was restraining an outburst. At last, from a feeling of helplessness, sorrow, anger, and invincible yearning, two tears gathered in his eyes, which spoke with greater power to Petronius than the most eloquent words.
Then, meditating for a moment, he said,—“It is not Atlas who carries the world on his shoulders, but woman; and sometimes she plays with it as with a ball.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Petronius put his hand on her golden head.
“Thou hast arranged the folds well to-day, and I am satisfied with thee, Eunice.”
Under that touch her eyes were mist-covered in one instant from happiness, and her bosom began to heave quickly.
Petronius and Vinicius passed into the atrium, where Chilo Chilonides was waiting. When he saw them, he made a low bow. A smile came to the lips of Petronius at thought of his suspicion of yesterday, that this man might be Eunice’s lover. The man who was standing before him could not be any one’s lover. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 Maximus of the great Anician house was elected Emperor in place of Valentinian. The placid, virtuous senator, a man of the latest culture, who regulated his days by his clypsedra, or water-clock, whose exceptionally magnificent and exceptionally respectable festivities were the admiration of respectable Rome, was installed in the Imperial palace. His own wife had died—many said broken-hearted—from the wrongs of Valentinian; and there were suspicions that Petronius Maximus was an accomplice in the murder of his wife’s betrayer. ”

“ Perhaps Petronius only said, in Nero’s presence at some supper, that he saw a hostage of the Lygians at Aulus’s, and Nero, who is jealous of his own power, demanded thee only because hostages belong to Cæsar. But he does not like Aulus and Pomponia. No! it does not seem to me that if Petronius wished to take thee from Aulus he would use such a method. I do not know whether Petronius is better than others who surround Cæsar, but he is different. Maybe too thou wilt find some one else who would be willing to intercede for thee. ”

“ The wit of a Petronius, the ridicule of a Martial, the bitter sarcasm of a Juvenal, were lost on a people abandoned to frivolous gossip and demoralizing excesses. The haughty scorn with which a sensual beauty, living on the smiles and purse of a fortunate glutton, would pass, in her gilded chariot, some of the impoverished descendants of the great Camillus, might have provoked a smile, had any one been found, even a neglected poet, to have given them countenance and sympathy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I know how Cæsar rewarded thee for the care with which thou didst surround his years of youth. But the author of the removal of Lygia is Petronius. Indicate to me a method against him, indicate influence. Perhaps with all his corruption he is worthier than those scoundrels with whom Nero surrounds himself at present. But to show him that he has done an evil deed is to lose time simply. Petronius has lost long since that faculty which distinguishes good from evil. Show him that his act is ugly, he will be ashamed of it. ”

“ If Petronius was a good man, if he loved his fellow men, and if he did all that was within his power to do to make them better men, more capacious for a full life here and more worthy of eternal life, why should they not allow him to enjoy his reward in the bosom of the Lord? How can they enhance his happiness, what does mankind gain by taking the semblance of that which once formed a framework for his spirit and transferring it from one vessel to another while mumbling or chanting over it? ”

“ The last hope of our taking the poem seriously has departed. Yet this passage of Petronius contains much sound criticism. Military and political history does not admit of being turned into genuine poetry; an epic on an historic war must depend largely on its purple patches of description and rhetoric: it almost demands that prominence of epigram and 'commonplace' that Eumolpus condemns. [27l] Petronius sees the weakness of Lucan's epic; he fails because, like Silius Italicus, he thinks he has discovered a remedy. The faults of Lucan's poem are largely inherent in the subject chosen ”

“ Near the triclinium were heard in the alley, the steps of the old general, Vinicius, Lygia, and little Aulus; but before they arrived, Petronius had put another question—“But believest thou in the gods, then, Pomponia?”
“I believe in God, who is one, just, and all-powerful,” answered the wife of Aulus Plautius.
Chapter III
“SHE believes in God who is one, all-powerful, and just,” said Petronius, when he found himself again in the litter with Vinicius. “If her God is all-powerful, He controls life and death; and if He is just, He sends death justly. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During this period, Petronius gave vent to his indignation, in the satire transmitted under his name by the title of Satyricon. But his total retirement from court did not secure him from the artifices of Tigellinus, who laboured with all his power to destroy the man whom he had industriously supplanted in the emperor's favour. With this view he insinuated to Nero, that Petronius was too intimately connected with Scevinus not to be engaged in Piso's conspiracy ”

“ Petronius wished to oppose; but Aulus Plautius added in his hissing voice,—
"And we feel stranger and stranger among people who give Greek names to our Roman divinities."
"The gods have become for some time mere figures of rhetoric," replied Petronius, carelessly. "But since Greek rhetoricians taught us, it is easier for me even to say Hera than Juno."
He turned his eyes then to Pomponia, as if to signify that in presence of her no other divinity could come to his mind; and then he began to contradict what she had said touching old age.
"People age quickly, it is true ”

“ 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 ”

“ Hereupon Caius, taking it very heinously that he should be thus despised by the Jews alone, sent Petronius to be president of Syria, and successor in the government to Vitellius, and gave him order to make an invasion into Judea, with a great body of troops; and if they would admit of his statue willingly, to erect it in the temple of God; but if they were obstinate, to conquer them by war, and then to do it. Accordingly, Petronius took the government of Syria, and made haste to obey Caesar's epistle. ”

“ I care not for others! I thank thee, but I do not want her. I will seek that one through the city. Give command to bring me a Gallic cloak with a hood. I will go beyond the Tiber—if I could see even Ursus.”
And he hurried away. Petronius, seeing that he could not remain in one place, did not try to detain him. Taking, however, his refusal as a temporary dislike for all women save Lygia, and not wishing his own magnanimity to go for naught, he said, turning to the slave,—“Eunice, thou wilt bathe and anoint thyself, then dress: after that thou wilt go to the house of Vinicius.” ”

“ Anacharsis, Apicius, Petronius
To those who lay stress upon documentary evidence or literary testimony, to those trusting implicitly in the honesty and reliability of writers of fiction, we would recommend Petronius Arbiter.
His cena Trimalchionis, Trimalchio’s dinner, is the sole surviving piece from the pen of a Roman contemporary, giving detailed information on our subject. It is, too, the work of a great writer moving in the best circles, and, therefore, so much more desirable as an expert. Petronius deserves to be quoted in full but his work is too well-known, and our space too short. ”

“ 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. ”

“ NEXT morning, Petronius had barely finished dressing in the unctorium when Vinicius came, called by Tiresias. He knew that no news had come from the gates. This information, instead of comforting him, as a proof that Lygia was still in Rome, weighed him down still more, for he began to think that Ursus might have conducted her out of the city immediately after her seizure, and hence before Petronius’s slaves had begun to keep watch at the gates. It is true that in autumn, when the days become shorter, the gates are closed rather early ”