About the Work
The book in question is a scholarly edition of the surviving remains of Petronius, issued under the title Petronii Satirae et Liber Priapeorum, edited for the third time by Franz Buecheler and published in Berlin by Weidmann. The edition gathers the satirical prose-and-verse narrative conventionally known as the Satyricon together with the collection of Priapean poems, and it appends the satires of Varro and Seneca along with other scattered remains of the same kind. It is, in other words, a critical text rather than a single self-contained novel: the Latin is printed with a textual apparatus at the foot of each page, recording variant readings and conjectures by scholars, and the volume opens with a body of testimonia—ancient notices about the author drawn from Tacitus, Macrobius, and John Lydus—before the excerpts themselves begin.
“A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright terni has expired.”
The narrative that survives under Petronius’s name is fragmentary and episodic. It follows a narrator, Encolpius, and his companions through a series of disreputable adventures: a quarrel over a stolen cloak, a dinner at the house of the wealthy freedman Trimalchio, a shipwreck, a stay in the Greek city of Croton, and a run of erotic misadventures in which the narrator’s impotence is presented as the working of the god Priapus. The text preserved here is not continuous; it is an assemblage of excerpts, with gaps and breaks, and the edition treats it as such, presenting the narrative alongside the editorial scholarship that has tried to establish what Petronius actually wrote. The Liber Priapeorum—the book of Priapean poems—belongs to the same volume and to the same editorial project, though the narrative notes that follow are overwhelmingly concerned with the Satyricon.
The edition is a product of nineteenth-century classical philology. Its editor, Buecheler, worked within a tradition of German textual criticism that treated the recovery of ancient texts as a matter of collating manuscripts, weighing conjectures, and printing the results with full transparency about uncertainty. The publisher’s list bound into the volume advertises a whole series of Greek and Latin writers with German notes, edited by M. Haupt and H. Sauppe—Aristophanes, Demosthenes, Euripides, Herodotus, Homer, Plato, Plutarch, Sophocles, Thucydides, Xenophon, and others—which places the Petronius volume squarely within a large-scale nineteenth-century effort to make the classical canon available to students and scholars in reliable, annotated editions.
Context
The Petronius who emerges from the ancient testimonia is a figure of the Neronian court, and the circumstances of his death are as vivid as anything in his own fiction. Tacitus, in the sixteenth book of the Annals, records that in the Christian year 66 a group of men fell in the same column: Annaeus Mela, Cerialis Anicius, Rufius Crispinus, and Petronius. The historian then pauses to repeat a few things about this Petronius: that his days were passed in sleep and his nights in duties and pleasures, that as others gained fame by industry so he gained it by idleness, and that he was held not a glutton and spendthrift—as most who drain their own wealth are held—but a man of learned luxury. His sayings and deeds, the freer and more negligent they were, were the more gratefully received as simplicity. Yet as proconsul of Bithynia and soon as consul he showed himself vigorous and equal to affairs. Having fallen back into vices, or the imitation of vices, he was admitted among the few intimates of Nero as arbiter of elegance, so that nothing seemed charming and soft to Nero unless Petronius had approved it.
That position earned him the envy of Tigellinus, who attacked him by charging him with friendship with Scaevinus, corrupting a slave to inform, and dragging most of his household into chains. Nero was then in Campania, and had advanced as far as Cumae, where Petronius was detained. He did not endure further delays of fear or hope. He did not hastily expel life, but cut his veins, and as he pleased bound them and opened them again, and addressed his friends not on serious matters or by which he might seek the glory of constancy. He heard them relating nothing about the immortality of the soul and the opinions of philosophers, but light songs and easy verses. He gave some of his slaves largesse, some beatings. He entered upon feasts and indulged in sleep, so that although forced, his death might be similar to a natural one. Not even in his codicils did he flatter Nero or Tigellinus or any other powerful man, but he wrote out the shameful deeds of the prince under the names of male prostitutes and women, and the novelty of each debauchery, and sealed it and sent it to Nero; and he broke his ring, lest it soon be of use for making seals. Nero, wondering how the devices of his nights would become known, was offered Sâia, known in marriage to a senator and not unknown to him, adopted for every lust and very familiar to Petronius. She was driven into exile, as though she had not kept silent about what she had seen and endured, out of personal hatred.
This is the Petronius of history: the arbiter of elegance, the man of studied idleness, the suicide who turned his death into an aesthetic performance and his will into an instrument of revenge. Macrobius, in his commentary on the Dream of Scipio, groups him with Menander and his imitators and with Apuleius as a writer of plots filled with fictitious cases of lovers, noting that the Arbiter much exercised himself in that kind. John Lydus, in his work on Roman magistracies, records that Junius and Musonius and Petronius, having themselves in their histories attacked the satiric law, paraphrased it. These notices are thin, but they establish the two things the tradition has always attached to the name: a reputation for luxurious refinement and a reputation for satire.
Structure of the Book
The narrative that survives does not run in an unbroken line. It opens in the middle of things, with Encolpius returning to his room after surveying the city, exchanging kisses, and binding a boy in tight embraces—only to be interrupted when Ascyltos stealthily approaches the door, breaks the bolts, finds him at play, and beats him with a strap loosed from his bag, adding the insolent remark that he should not divide with his brother. From there the two companions go to the market as day fails, where they try to dispose of a stolen cloak and recognize, in a rustic buyer, the man who had found a tunic in the wilderness. The tunic, they suspect, is full of untouched gold coins. A dispute erupts over the two garments; the crowd laughs at their envy; a bald man with a tuberous forehead offers to sequester the cloak; and the quarrel is resolved by chance when the rustic throws the tunic in Ascyltos’s face and orders the cloak deposited. The two recover what they think is their treasure and rush to the inn to laugh at the sharpness of the crowd.
The narrative then moves to the house of Trimalchio, and the Cena Trimalchionis occupies the great central stretch of the surviving text. The narrator and his companions enter the bath, watch Trimalchio being dried with soft woollen mantles rather than linen, follow him to the dining room past a doorpost notice threatening a hundred lashes to any slave who leaves without orders, past a doorkeeper sorting peas on a silver plate, past a painted dog with the words “Beware of the dog” above it, past a wall painting of a slave market and of Trimalchio himself entering Rome with Minerva leading, past a shrine with silver Lares and a marble Venus and a golden box said to hold Trimalchio’s beard. They recline, and the dinner unfolds as a long sequence of dishes, performances, anecdotes, and jokes: a Corinthian donkey with white olives on one side and black on the other; a boy wreathed in ivy carrying grapes and reciting his master’s poems; Trimalchio’s departure to the privy and the conversation that fills the interval; the entrance of acrobats; a boy falling and being freed; Trimalchio’s epigram on the unexpected; his disquisition on Cicero and Publilius; the labels carried around in a cup and the gifts read out; the fight between Scylax the watchdog and Croesus’s puppy; the arrival of Habinnas and his wife Scintilla; the reading of the aediles’ edicts and the wills of foresters; the horn-players and Trimalchio’s command to pretend he is dead; the watchmen breaking down the door in the belief that the house is on fire.
The narrator and Agamemnon slip away from the tumult and wander through the midnight streets, guided only by the chalk marks Giton had prudently made on the pillars and columns the day before. They reach the inn, where the old woman has drunk too long to notice them, and are let in by Trimalchio’s courier, who breaks down the door. That night, in the narrator’s telling, is soft and close—until he wakes to find that Ascyltos has stolen the boy from him and transferred him to his own bed. The quarrel that follows nearly ends in blood: Ascyltos draws his sword and says he must cut off his part even with the sword; the narrator does the same; Giton throws himself between them and begs them not to pollute with mutual blood the rites of a most famous friendship. They sheathe their swords, and Ascyltos proposes that the boy himself choose whom he will follow. Giton does not even deliberate, but rises at the last word and chooses Ascyltos. The narrator, thunderstruck, falls on the bed and would have laid hands on himself had he not envied the enemy’s victory. Ascyltos goes out proud with his prize and soon abandons his comrade in a foreign place.
The narrator reflects in verse that the name of friendship clings as long as it is expedient, and that the counter on the board moves the work. The narrative then shifts to Eumolpus, the poet, who is stoned by a crowd at a portico for reciting his verses, covers his head, and flees to the shore. The narrator follows him, threatens to load his own cloak with rocks and draw blood from his head whenever he begins to “leave himself,” and extracts a promise that he will abstain from poetry for the day. The scene shifts again: the narrator sees Giton leaning against a wall with linens and strigils, sad and confused, clearly serving unwillingly. He speaks to test his eyes; Giton’s face brightens, and he begs to be snatched from the bloody brigand. The narrator drags him through a dark and filthy passage into his lodging, closes the doors, embraces him, and covers his face with tears. Giton asks whether he abandoned the narrator or the narrator betrayed him, and confesses that when he saw two armed men he fled to the stronger. The narrator kisses his breast, throws his hands around his neck, and binds him with his whole heart. Eumolpus arrives for dinner, jokes that Giton is a Ganymede, and recounts that he was nearly beaten at the bath for reciting a poem and that a naked youth who had lost his clothes was demanding Giton with no less indignation.
The narrative then moves to the sea. Eumolpus, Encolpius, and Giton are aboard a ship, and the question is how to escape without being seen. Encolpius proposes sliding down a rope into the skiff, cutting the cable, and committing the rest to fortune; Eumolpus objects that the helmsman keeps watch at night and that a sailor lies day and night in the skiff. Eumolpus proposes sewing them into two hides and carrying them out as baggage; Encolpius objects that they would be bound like solid goods, unable to sneeze or snore. Another speaker proposes changing their colors from hair to nails and passing as Ethiopian slaves; Giton asks why not also circumcise them so they seem Jews, pierce their ears to imitate Arabs, and chalk their faces so Gaul thinks them its own citizens—as if one color alone could pervert their appearance. Giton then suggests covering their heads with clothing and plunging into the deep. Eumolpus rejects this and orders the barber to shave not only both their heads but also their eyebrows, and then marks their foreheads with a skillful inscription so they seem punished with a brand. The deception is carried out; a deckhand sees the barber at work by moonlight, curses the omen, and throws himself back into his berth. Encolpius dreams that Priapus says to him: “Encolpius, know that what you seek has been brought by me into your ship.” Tryphaena dreams that a likeness of Neptune says something to her.
The narrative then reaches the famous tale of the widow of Ephesus, told aboard ship. A matron was mourning her recently deceased husband in a hut near the place where the governor had ordered robbers crucified. A soldier guarding the crosses notices a bright light among the tombs and hears groans, descends into the tomb, and sees a beautiful woman. He brings his meal into the monument and urges her to stop grieving uselessly, arguing that all share the same end and dwelling. She weeps more violently and tears her hair. The soldier persists; the maid, corrupted by the smell of food, first extends her hand, then tries to persuade her mistress, asking what good it will do to die alive and waste her spirit before fate calls. The woman, dry from days of abstinence, allows her stubbornness to be broken and eats as greedily as the maid. The soldier then attacks her chastity with the same blandishments, and the maid helps, quoting “Will you fight even against a pleasing love?” The woman does not abstain from that part of the body either, and the soldier wins. They lie together not only that night but the next and third day, with the tomb doors closed so visitors think she died over her husband’s body. Meanwhile, the parents of one crucified man take down the body at night and give it proper burial. The soldier sees one cross without a corpse, fears punishment, and tells the woman he will kill himself with his sword. The woman, no less merciful than chaste, says the gods forbid she see two funerals of her dearest in one day; she prefers to give the dead than kill the living. She orders her husband’s body taken from the chest and affixed to the empty cross. The soldier uses the clever woman’s wit, and the next day the people marvel how the dead man went to the cross.
The sailors laugh at the story, but Tryphaena blushes and rests her face on Giton’s neck. Lichas does not laugh but angrily says that if the emperor had been just, he should have returned the father of the family’s body to the monument and led the woman to the cross. The treaty’s words and the prevailing cheerfulness prevent anger. Tryphaena, in Giton’s lap, covers his chest with kisses and combs his hair. Encolpius, sad and impatient of the new treaty, takes no food or drink, watching both with hostile eyes. Every kiss and blandishment wounds him. He does not know whether to be angrier at the boy for taking his lover or at the lover for corrupting the boy. Tears overwhelm him, and groans nearly take his life. Then the sea swells, clouds gather, and darkness covers the day. Sailors rush to duties and take down sails. The wind drives uncertain waves, and the helmsman does not know the course. Lichas, trembling, stretches his hands to Encolpius and asks him to help and return the divine garment and sistrum to the ship, begging by faith. The wind throws him into the sea, and the storm whirls and drowns him. Tryphaena is seized by her most faithful servants, placed in a boat with most of the baggage, and taken away to certain death. Encolpius weeps and says the gods have merited this, that they join only in death, but fortune does not grant it. He asks Giton, if he truly loved Encolpius, to give kisses while permitted and snatch this last joy from hastening fate. Giton undresses, covered by Encolpius’s tunic, and offers his head for a kiss. To prevent the waves from separating them, Encolpius girds them both with a belt and says if nothing else, the sea will bear them joined longer, or if merciful, cast them to the same shore, or a passerby will stone them with traditional humanity, or the sand will compose them. Encolpius endures the last bond and, as if on a funeral bed, awaits death no longer troublesome.
The narrative then includes the Bellum Civile, a long poem on the civil war, in which favor had a price, liberty and virtue had fallen away from the old, and majesty lay corrupted by gold. Cato is driven out by the people; the victor is sadder still and ashamed to have seized the fasces from Cato. The poet laments that not a man but Roman power and glory were defeated in one person. Rome, so ruined, became her own merchandise and prey without an avenger. Usury and the use of money consumed the people, caught in a double whirlpool. No house was certain, no body free of pledge; like a plague conceived in silent marrow, it wandered through the limbs with barking cares. Arms pleased the wretched, and comforts worn away by luxury were repaired by wounds. Boldness without resources was safe. Fortune had borne three leaders, all of whom deadly Enyo overwhelmed with a heap of arms. Crassus is held by the Parthians, Magnus lies on the Libyan sea, and Julius drenched ungrateful Rome with blood. As if the earth could not bear so many tombs, it divided the ashes. Father Dis raises his face from the flames of pyres and provokes winged Fortune, asking whether she does not feel herself conquered by the Roman weight, and whether she can no longer raise the doomed mass. Fortune replies that all she granted to the Roman citadels she hates, and that she is angry at her own gifts. The same god who placed these masses will destroy them. She sees Philippi strewn with twin death and the pyres of Thessaly and the funerals of the Iberian race. The crash of arms resounds in her trembling ears, and she sees the groaning barriers of the Nile, the Libyan land, the Actiac bays, and arms fearing Apollo. She calls on Tisiphone to satisfy herself with great ruin and chew her torn wounds. Scarcely had she finished when the cloud, rent by flashing lightning, trembled and cut off the dashed fires. The father of shadows subsided, and with his bosom drawn back, trembling, he grew pale at his brother’s blows. The coming disasters of men and future losses were revealed by the auspices of the gods: Titan, deformed with bloody face, hid his countenance in darkness; Cynthia extinguished her full face and withdrew light from crime; mountains thundered with their peaks fallen and broken; the sky rages with the noise of arms, and the trumpet, making the stars tremble, rouses Mars; Aetna is devoured by unusual fires and sends lightning into the ether.
The narrative then returns to Encolpius and his impotence, framed as the wrath of Priapus. After a bath and light anointing, he ate stronger foods—bulbs and snail necks without sauce—and drank wine sparingly. Before sleep he took a gentle walk and entered his bedroom without Giton, fearing his brother would pull his side. The next day, feeling physically and mentally well, he descended to the same plane tree grove, though he feared the place as inauspicious, and waited for Chrysidem as his guide. He sat where he had been the day before, and she arrived with an old woman companion. After greeting him, she asked if he had begun to have good sense. The old woman, Proselenos, then performed a magical ritual: she took a thread of varied colors from her bosom, bound his neck, sprinkled dust with spit, marked his forehead with her finger, and after a chant ordered him to spit three times and throw enchanted pebbles wrapped in purple into his lap. She then tried to test his groin’s strength, and his nerves obeyed, filling the old woman’s hand with great motion. She exulted, asking Chrysidem if she saw what she had excited in others. A poem follows describing a noble plane tree.
Inside the Book
The Edition and Its Testimonia
The volume opens with Google’s digitization notice, explaining that this is a scan of a book preserved on library shelves and now in the public domain, with marginalia left visible as a record of its journey from publisher to reader. Users are asked to keep their use non-commercial, to refrain from automated querying, and to preserve attribution. The title page then identifies the work as Petronii Satirae et Liber Priapeorum, edited for the third time by Franz Buecheler, with the satires of Varro and Seneca and similar remains appended, published in Berlin by Weidmann in 1882. A publisher’s list advertises a series of Greek and Latin authors with German notes, and the volume supplies its testimonia on Petronius: Tacitus, Annals XVI, recording that in the year 66 Annaeus Mela, Cerialis Anicius, Rufius Crispinus, and Petronius fell together. Tacitus describes Petronius as a man who passed his days in sleep and his nights in duties and pleasures, winning fame by idleness rather than industry—not a common spendthrift but one of learned luxury, whose free and negligent sayings were received the more gratefully for their simplicity. As proconsul of Bithynia and soon consul he proved vigorous and equal to affairs, then fell back into vice and was admitted among Nero’s few intimates as arbiter of elegance, so that nothing seemed charming to Nero unless Petronius approved it. Hence the envy of Tigellinus, who charged him with friendship with Scaevinus and corrupted a slave to inform against him. Detained at Cumae, Petronius did not hastily expel life but cut his veins, bound and reopened them as he pleased, and addressed his friends not on the immortality of the soul but with light songs and easy verses, giving some slaves largesse and others beatings, so that his death, though forced, might resemble a natural one. In his codicils he flattered no powerful man but wrote out the prince’s shameful deeds under the names of male prostitutes and women, sealed the account, and sent it to Nero, breaking his ring lest it serve for seals. Sâia, a senator’s wife familiar to Petronius, was driven into exile as though she had not kept silent. Macrobius adds that the Arbiter much exercised himself with plots of fictitious lovers, and John Lydus notes that Junius, Musonius, and Petronius paraphrased the satiric law in their histories.
The Stolen Cloak and the Tunic of Gold
The narrative proper begins with the narrator returning to his room after surveying the city, exchanging kisses and binding a boy in tight embraces until Ascyltos stealthily approaches the door, breaks the bolts, and finds him at play with his brother. Ascyltos fills the room with laughter, uncovers him, calls him “most holy brother,” and accuses him of a secret rendezvous; not content with words, he loosens a strap from his bag and beats him severely, adding that he should not divide with his brother. At nightfall they come to the market, where a crowd of dubious goods is for sale. Since they themselves carry a stolen cloak, they shake out its fringe in a corner, hoping a buyer will be drawn by its splendor. A rustic familiar to the narrator approaches with a little woman and examines the cloak; Ascyltos freezes, recognizing the man as the one who had found the tunic in the wilderness. The rustic is selling the tunic disdainfully as a beggar’s spoil, and Ascyltos, seeing the deposited treasure intact, draws the narrator aside and asks what they should do. The narrator, delighted that fortune has freed him from suspicion, urges civil law and an interdict; Ascyltos fears the laws, saying that where money alone reigns judgment is public merchandise, and proposes buying back their own property with a small sum rather than entering an ambiguous lawsuit. Having only a single dipondium destined for chickpeas and lupines, they decide to sell the cloak cheaply to recover the greater gain. As soon as they display it, the woman with covered head seizes both fringes and shouts “Thieves!” The crowd laughs at their envy, for one side claims a precious garment and the other a rag. Ascyltos quiets the laughter and proposes a simple exchange: let each man’s property be dearest to him, and let them return the tunic and receive their cloak. The rustic and woman are pleased, but nocturnal advocates demand both items be deposited with them and a judge inspect the dispute the next day, since on both sides there is suspicion of theft. A bald man with a tuberous forehead seizes the cloak and promises to produce it the next day, though it is clear the garment would be strangled among thieves. Chance aids both parties: the rustic, indignant that they demand the exhibition of a patchwork garment, throws the tunic in Ascyltos’s face and orders the cloak deposited. Having recovered the treasure, they rush to the inn, close the doors, and laugh at the sharpness of the crowd and the slanderers.
The House of Trimalchio
Admiring the luxuries, the narrator and companions are met by Menelaus, who declares this is where they will recline and that they already see the beginning of the dinner. Trimalchio snaps his fingers, and a eunuch brings a chamber pot to a player; after emptying his bladder, Trimalchio calls for water, sprinkles his fingers, and wipes them on a boy’s head. They enter the bath, grow warm with sweat, and pass out to the cold bath. Trimalchio, perfumed with oil, is dried with soft woollen mantles while three masseurs drink Falernian wine in his sight; when they spill much, he says this is his own toast. Wrapped in a scarlet cloak, he is placed on a litter, preceded by four decorated runners and a sedan-chair carrying his pet—an old, bleary-eyed boy uglier than Trimalchio himself—while a musician with tiny pipes plays at his ear the whole way. At the door, a notice warns that any slave who goes out without the master’s order will receive a hundred lashes. A doorkeeper in green with a cherry-red belt sorts peas on a silver plate, and above the threshold a golden cage holds a variegated magpie greeting those entering. The narrator nearly falls backward, then examines the wall painting: a huge dog bound with a chain, with “Beware of the dog” above it; a slave-market with captions; Trimalchio himself with long hair holding a caduceus, entering Rome with Minerva leading; the painter’s rendering of how he learned accounting and became a steward; and at the end of the portico Mercury lifting him by the chin onto a high tribunal, with Fortune and the three Fates spinning golden threads. A troop of runners exercises with a trainer, and in a corner cupboard silver Lares stand with a marble Venus and a golden box said to hold Trimalchio’s beard. The steward tells him the pictures in the middle are “Iliad and Odyssey” and “the gladiatorial show of Laenas.”
Fire, Acrobats, and a Fallen Boy
The evening’s gossip turns to disaster: a fire has broken out in the Pompeian gardens, starting from the house of Nasta the steward. Trimalchio, hearing of it, asks when those gardens were bought for him; the accountant admits it was the previous year and so never entered into the accounts. Trimalchio flies into a rage, decreeing that anyone who buys estates on his behalf must inform him within six months or the purchase will be struck from his books. Then come the day’s edicts of the aediles, read aloud along with the wills of foresters in which Trimalchio is disinherited by codicil, lists of stewards, a freedwoman repudiated by a watchman and caught in a bath attendant’s quarters, a steward banished to Baiae, a cashier made a defendant, and a trial among the bedroom attendants.
At last the acrobats arrive. A tasteless fool sets up ladders and makes a boy dance through the rungs, leap through burning hoops, and balance an amphora on his teeth. Trimalchio alone admires it, declaring acrobats and horn-players the two things he most gladly watches, and ordering his chorus player to perform in Latin. Mid-performance a boy of his household falls; the guests cry out not for the wretch but for fear the dinner will end badly. Fortunata rushes in with disheveled hair, and the boy, already crawling at their feet begging dismissal, is freed by Trimalchio’s decree — lest anyone say so great a man was wounded by a slave. The narrator, remembering the cook who forgot to gut the pig, keeps scanning the walls for some new automaton.
Trimalchio on Art, Doctors, and Money-Changers
Trimalchio insists the incident not pass without an inscription, and after brief labor recites a verse on Fortune’s unexpected blows, then calls for Falernian wine. Talk turns to poets, and he asks the company the difference between Cicero and Publilius — one more eloquent, the other more honorable — before declaiming a long tirade against luxury: peacocks, capons, the stork turned into a cooking pot, pearls and emeralds bought so honesty may sparkle from carbuncles. He then pronounces the doctor and the money-changer the hardest professions, since one reads what lies inside a man and the other sees bronze through silver, and calls oxen, sheep, and bees the most laborious of beasts.
Croesus, Scylax, and the Ridden Master
Trimalchio notices a bleary-eyed, filthy-toothed boy called Croesus wrapping a fat black puppy in green cloth and force-feeding it bread. He orders the watchdog Scylax brought in; the huge chained dog lies down at a signal, and Trimalchio boasts no one loves him more. Jealous, the boy drops the puppy and sets it fighting; Scylax nearly tears it apart, a lampstand overturns, crystal is smashed, and hot oil scalds the guests. Trimalchio, refusing to seem upset, kisses the boy and lets him ride on his back, the boy striking his shoulders and shouting “Bucca, bucca, quot sunt hic?” He then orders a great mixing-bowl and drinks divided among the slaves at his feet, threatening to douse the head of anyone who refuses: seriousness belongs to daytime, now is the hour for merriment.
Habinnas Arrives
Whole fat hens are served as if they were thrushes, with capped goose eggs. A lictor strikes the doors and a reveler enters in white with a crowd; the terrified narrator thinks a praetor has come and tries to rise barefoot, until Agamemnon laughs and identifies Habinnas, a sevir and the finest maker of monuments. Habinnas, drunk, garlanded, and perfumed, takes the place of honor and describes the funeral feast he has left: a pig crowned with a cup, sausage, beet, home-made bread, cold scriblita with hot honey, chickpeas, lupines, apples saved in his napkin for his little home-born slave, bear meat that Scintilla nearly vomited and he devoured, then cheese, snails, livers, eggs, turnip, mustard, and oxycomina. He asks why Fortunata does not recline; when he threatens to leave, she is summoned, and comes in pale-green sash, cherry-colored tunic, gilded slippers, wiping her hands, to kiss Scintilla.
The Mock Funeral and Escape
Trimalchio has the guests test the wool and threatens Stichus with burning if moths touch it, then opens a jar of nard, anoints everyone, and invites them to consider themselves bidden to his funeral rites. Heavy with drunkenness, he calls for horn-players, stretches out, and says, “Pretend I am dead.” The funeral blast is so loud that the district watchmen, thinking the house afire, break down the door with water and axes. The narrator and Agamemnon slip out and flee as if from a fire, wandering dark and drunk until Giton’s foresight — pillars chalked the day before — guides them to the inn.
Ascyltos Steals Giton
The narrator celebrates a soft night with Giton, but Ascyltos, “inventor of every injury,” steals the boy into his own bed. Waking to the despoiled bed, the narrator doubts whether to run them both through, then rouses Giton and orders Ascyltos out. Ascyltos agrees to divide their belongings, then says, “Let us divide the boy too,” and draws his sword; the narrator does the same. Giton begs them not to make the tavern a Theban pair, offering his own throat. Swords are sheathed, and Ascyltos proposes the boy choose freely. Giton, without hesitation, chooses Ascyltos. Thunderstruck, the narrator falls on the bed and would have killed himself had he not envied the enemy’s victory. Ascyltos leaves proud with his prize, soon abandoning his comrade.
Eumolpus and the Recovery of Giton
The narrator reflects in verse that friendship’s name clings only while expedient. At a portico, strollers throw stones at Eumolpus as he recites; he covers his head and flees, and the narrator follows, threatening to pelt him whenever he “leaves himself.” Eumolpus admits theaters have always received him so, and promises to abstain from poetry for the day. Then the narrator sees Giton leaning against a wall with linens and strigils, sad and unwilling; Giton begs to be snatched from the bloody brigand, and the narrator drags him through a dark passage to his lodging, where they weep and reconcile, Giton confessing he fled to the stronger when he saw two armed men.
Eumolpus at Dinner
Night falls and Eumolpus knocks; the narrator checks it is not Ascyltos, then admits him. Seeing Giton serve, Eumolpus jokingly calls him Ganymede, and the narrator fears a new rival. Eumolpus recounts being nearly beaten at the bath for reciting, then hearing a naked youth loudly demanding Giton, mocked by boys and admired by a crowd for his enormous endowment — a Roman knight clothed him and took him home.
The Plan to Escape the Ship
Aboard the ship, Eumolpus weighs the odds that the brother has died so quickly, and notes that Lichas may visit the sick man out of duty—an advantage for the fugitives if the master were summoned to them. He imagines the ship diverted from its course, and asks how they could disembark unseen: covered heads would draw a helping hand, bare heads would proscribe them. Encolpius proposes recklessness—sliding down a rope into the skiff, cutting the cable, and trusting fortune—refusing to expose the innocent Eumolpus to another’s peril. Eumolpus calls this not unwise, but warns that the helmsman keeps watch at night, and that a sailor of the permanent watch lies day and night in the skiff, removable only by slaughter. He then offers his own plan: sewing them into two hides, bound with thongs and kept among the baggage as packs, lips left open to breathe and eat, while he shouts at night that slaves have thrown themselves into the sea; at port he would carry them out unsuspected. Encolpius objects—bound like solid goods, unable to sneeze or snore, clothing consumed by wrinkles, papers changing shape—and asks whether they, young and unused to labor, could endure rags and chains like statues.
Another speaker reveals a different remedy: Eumolpus, a student of letters, surely has ink, by which they could change their color from hair to nails and pass as Ethiopian slaves. Giton mocks the idea, asking why not circumcise them as Jews, pierce their ears as Arabs, chalk their faces as Gauls—as if one color alone could pervert their appearance. He notes that art’s color stains the body, it does not change it, and tells what occurred to his mad mind: they should cover their heads and plunge into the deep. Eumolpus exclaims that neither gods nor men would allow so shameful an exit; instead, his hired man is a barber, who will shave their heads and eyebrows, and Eumolpus will mark their foreheads with a skillful inscription so they seem branded—letters that will both avert suspicion and cover their faces with the shadow of punishment.
The Branding and the Dream
The deception is not delayed: they stealthily advance to the ship’s side and present their heads and eyebrows to the barber. Eumolpus fills both foreheads with huge letters, drawing the notorious fugitive epigram across the whole face. A deckhand, relieving his stomach, notices by moonlight the untimely barbering, curses the omen, and throws himself back into his berth. They return to their order of sadness and spend the remaining hours in poor sleep. Encolpius dreams that Priapus says: “Encolpius, know that what you seek has been brought by me into your ship.” Tryphaena shudders and says she seemed to sleep with him, for a likeness of Neptune at Baiae seemed to speak to her.
The Widow of Ephesus
The governor orders the crucifixion of robbers near a hut where a matron mourns her dead husband. A soldier guarding the crosses notices a light among the tombs and hears groans; descending, he sees a beautiful woman and realizes she cannot endure her loss. He brings his meal and urges her to stop grieving uselessly, arguing all share the same end. She weeps more violently, but the maid, corrupted by the smell of food, first extends her hand, then persuades her mistress that ashes and buried ghosts feel nothing—urging her to live while permitted. The woman, dry from days of abstinence, eats greedily. The soldier then attacks her chastity with the same blandishments, the maid quoting “Will you fight even against a pleasing love?” The woman does not abstain, and the soldier wins. They lie together three days, tomb doors closed. Meanwhile, the parents of one crucified man take down the body at night. The soldier, seeing one cross empty, fears punishment and tells the woman he will kill himself. She, no less merciful than chaste, orders her husband’s body affixed to the empty cross. The next day the people marvel how the dead man went to the cross.
The Storm and the Shipwreck
The sailors laugh, but Tryphaena blushes and rests her face on Giton’s neck. Lichas does not laugh, angrily saying the emperor should have returned the father’s body and led the woman to the cross—he had recalled Hedyle and the plundered ship. The treaty’s words and prevailing cheerfulness prevent anger. Tryphaena, in Giton’s lap, covers his chest with kisses and combs his hair. Encolpius, sad and impatient of the new treaty, takes no food or drink, watching both with hostile eyes; every kiss wounds him. He does not know whether to be angrier at the boy or the lover. Tears overwhelm him. A part of pleasure tempts him, but he seeks a friend’s compliance. Eumolpus swears with most solemn words.
While they toss such things, the sea swells, clouds gather, and darkness covers the day. Sailors rush to duties; the wind drives uncertain waves, and the helmsman does not know the course. Dense darkness hides even the prow. Lichas, trembling, stretches his hands to Encolpius, begging him to return the divine garment and sistrum. The wind throws him into the sea, and the storm drowns him. Tryphaena is seized by her servants, placed in a boat with most of the baggage, and taken away to certain death. Encolpius weeps, saying the gods have merited this—that they join only in death, but fortune does not grant it. He asks Giton, if he truly loved him, to give kisses while permitted. Giton undresses, covered by Encolpius’s tunic, and offers his head. To prevent the waves from separating them, Encolpius girds them both with a belt, saying the sea will bear them joined longer, or cast them to the same shore, or a passerby will stone them, or the sand will compose them. He endures the last bond and awaits death no longer troublesome.
The Bellum Civile
The verse text continues: favor had a price, liberty and virtue had fallen, majesty lay corrupted by gold. Cato is driven out by the people; the victor is sadder still, ashamed to have seized the fasces from Cato. Rome became her own merchandise and prey without an avenger. Usury consumed the people; no house was certain, no body free of pledge. Arms pleased the wretched, and comforts worn away by luxury were repaired by wounds. Fortune had borne three leaders, all overwhelmed by deadly Enyo: Crassus held by the Parthians, Magnus on the Libyan sea, Julius drenching ungrateful Rome with blood. Father Dis raises his face from the flames and provokes Fortune: “Power over human and divine things, Fortune, do you not feel yourself conquered by the Roman weight? The Roman youth hates its own strength. They build homes with gold and send them to the stars. Behold, they even seek my kingdoms. Come, change your peaceful face to battles and rouse the Romans, and give deaths to my kingdoms.” Fortune replies: “O father, your vows will yield; for no lesser anger rebels in this breast. All that I granted to the Roman citadels I hate.
The Slave’s Report and Chrysis’s Embrace
The narrator asks Giton whether anyone has come looking for him. No one today, the boy answers, but yesterday a woman of some refinement entered, spoke at length, and wore him down with a summons-like harangue: the narrator has deserved punishment and will pay a servile penalty if the injured party presses his complaint. Before the narrator can finish his own complaint, Chrysis bursts in, throws her arms around him, and declares she has found exactly what she hoped for—he is her desire, her pleasure, and this fire will end only in blood. A newly bought slave then runs up with a warning: the master is furious that the narrator has been absent from duty two days, and he had better prepare a plausible excuse, since an angry master’s rage will hardly stop short of a beating.
Philomela and the Deceived Heirs
A widow named Philomela, a matron of the highest standing who has long made a trade of extracting inheritances—first by the services of her youth, then by wills and the deaths of the childless—arrives to press her son and daughter upon childless old men. She comes to Eumolpus, commends her children to his prudence and goodness, and entrusts herself and all her property to him, calling him the one man in the world who can daily instruct the young with wholesome precepts. She leaves the children in his house to hear him speak, the only inheritance one can give the young, and departs as if to make vows at a temple. Eumolpus, modest enough that even the narrator seems a boy beside him, does not delay in inviting the girl to the rites of Priapus. But he has told everyone he is gouty with loose loins, and must keep the pretense consistent or risk overturning the whole tragedy. He begs the girl to sit upon his “commended goodness” and orders Corax under the bed to move his master’s loins by hand. Corax obeys, repaying the girl’s trick with equal motion, and when the matter nears its effect Eumolpus loudly urges him to intensify his duty. The old man, poised between the maid and the girlfriend, plays as if on a swing, repeating the performance with great laughter, his own included. The narrator, unwilling to lose the habit through idleness, then tests whether the brother will tolerate an injury while the boy peers through a little door at his sister’s automata; the learned boy does not reject his blandishments, but finds a hostile deity there too.
Mercury’s Restoration
The narrator declares that the greater gods are those who restored him to wholeness. Mercury, accustomed to lead and lead back souls, has by his benefits restored what an angry hand cut off, so that he might know himself more grateful than Protesilaus or any of the ancients. Having said this, he lifts his tunic and applies himself wholly to Eumolpus. At first Eumolpus shudders; then, to believe it more fully, he handles the gods’ benefits with both hands.
Socrates’ Boast and the Snare of Hope
Socrates, “of gods and men,” used to boast that he had never looked into a tavern nor entrusted his eyes to any crowd, so that nothing is more advantageous than always to converse with wisdom. The narrator agrees: no one falls into misfortune more quickly than those who covet another’s property. Where would swindlers and embezzlers live unless they sent little boxes or sounding bronze shrines into the crowd in place of hooks? As mute animals are enticed by food, so men are caught only when they bite on something of hope.
The Will’s Condition and Gorgias’s Readiness
The ship from Africa, as promised, with the money and household, has not come; the legacy-hunters, now exhausted, have diminished their generosity, and the common fortune has begun to return to the narrator’s repentance. He declares that all who hold legacies in his will, except his freedmen, shall receive what he has given on one condition: that they cut his body into pieces and eat it while the people stand by. Among certain peoples, he notes, the law still holds that the dead are consumed by their relatives, so much so that the sick are often rebuked for making their flesh worse. He advises his friends not to refuse what he commands: with the same spirit with which they devoted his soul, they should consume his body. The huge fame of money blinds the eyes and minds of the wretched, and Gorgias is prepared to carry it out.
The Epigram, the Conspectus, and the Index
An epigram on Petronius follows, declaring that his song runs with divine weight, sharpening the morals of young and old alike, so that the wanton girl rejoices in his jests and the cold old man feels his delights; he wrote as companion of dread Nero, called Arbiter by his own judgment. Variant readings are noted, and a chapter-by-chapter summary of the Satirae retraces the whole plot: Encolpius in a Greek city of Campania debating rhetoric with Agamemnon; the brothel, the quarrel with Ascyltos, the recovered tunic full of gold; Quartilla’s demand for satisfaction and the dinner rites of Priapus; the banquet of Trimalchio with its courses, guests, tales of the wolf and witches, and the uproar that lets the companions escape; Giton stolen away by Ascyltos; Eumolpus in the picture gallery narrating his Pergamum affair and explaining the fall of Troy in verse. There follows an index of hexameters, elegiac distichs, and Thimalchion’s paired verses, with notes on meters and on the rustic glosses the editor has excluded—since the testimony of the recent Traguriensis codex is little trusted, and Petronius plainly did not wish to imitate all the squalor of plebeian speech. The index lists words alphabetically with chapter references, from “absentivos” and “abstinax” onward, with grammatical notes on the accusative and adverb.
The Priapea
The poems of the Priapea open with the speaker distinguishing his subject from a goddess born from her father’s head: instead, a red guardian of gardens, excessively endowed, whose groin no clothing covers. He tells a woman either to draw a tunic over the part needing cover or to read with the same eyes she looks at it. The poet says he wrote these verses playfully, worthy of a garden rather than a book, and did not invoke the Muses to an unvirginal place, asking that whatever he noted idly on temple walls be received favorably. He could have spoken obscurely, but it is simpler to say in Latin “da pedicare”; his page is coarse. Lalage dedicates obscene tablets from the books of Elephantis to the rigid god, asking him to test whether the painted figures produce a work. Priapus gives a boy a law in two verses: what his garden holds may be taken with impunity if the boy gives what his garden holds. Though wooden, with wooden sickle and wooden penis, he will seize the thief and hide the whole thing, however large, in the seventh rib. When he speaks, one letter is always sinned, for he always “pe-dico,” his tongue lisping.
The Closing Poems of the Priapea
The collection’s final poems continue the mock-serious voice of Priapus with a long meditation on the phallus as a force behind epic and myth. Had the member of Pelops’ line not been well-born, old Chryses would have had nothing to complain of; that same member deprived a companion of his Theban mistress, and the speaker would have preferred Achilles’ own. The Pelethronian bard sang a wretched song to his cithara, himself more taut than his instrument, and from this the noble wrath and the sacred Iliad began. The second theme is the wandering of deceitful Ulysses: if one seeks the truth, love moved him too. Here is read the root from which the golden flower comes, which when called by one name was the phallus by another. Circe and Calypso sought the great vessel of the Dulichian man; Alcinous’ daughter marveled that his member could scarcely be covered by a leafy branch. Yet he hurried to his old wife, his whole mind on Penelope, who remains so chaste that her house is full of suitors. To learn which was stronger she told the erect suitors that no one bent the bow better than her Ulysses, and bade them string it so she might know what kind of men they were. By this law, the speaker says, he could have pleased Penelope, but at that time he had not yet been made.
The remaining poems turn to Priapus’ familiar threats and complaints. A thief who reaches for the sweetness of the fig is told to reckon how many pounds of cock he must shit. A poor tenant mocked the speaker, gave a cake and poured meal, then departed with the rite performed; a neighbor’s dog came, ate the offering, and propitiated him all night by erecting. He warns against placing anything more there, lest a crowd of grave-diggers come to his filth and, while worshipping him, find hostile guardians. Whoever plucks the fruits committed to his care will learn what sweet things he grieves to lose. Priapus is urged to threaten thieves with a reddened morning, though the warning is hardly needed: steal the large apples and he will give thin arms. To the pathics who eye him sidelong he protests that no erect member stands in his groin, yet this lifeless log will be useful if given an altar. The member will go through the middle of boys and girls, but for bearded men seek only the top. A catalogue of divine patrons follows—Dodona to Jupiter, Samos to Juno, Pallas to the Cecropian citadel, Delia to Crete, Venus to Cnidos and Paphos—before the speaker boasts that though old and gray he can pierce Tithonus, Priam, and Nestor. He is angered by those who build a dense hedge forbidding thieves: this harms while it helps, blocking the way so guilt cannot be expiated by sacrifice. He who once split thieves’ asses now hangs for nights and days, paying penalties and going to seed, living vilely like a closed citharoedus abstaining. He begs that no fibula be put on Priapus lest he perish of weak mold. A curse falls on the wicked cunt-licking woman through whom a girl was not lying before, and who now swears she cannot walk because of her groin. Priapus is told not to be ashamed of being heavy with the evil eye, since he is no more fascinous than the poet.
The Fragments of Varro’s Menippean Satires
The edition then turns to the fragments of Varro’s Menippean satires, opening with a complaint that Quintipor Glodius composed so many comedies without any muse, prompting the speaker to ask whether he himself has produced even one little book. A certain Maree is accused of drunkenness and of beginning to ruminate on Homer’s Odyssey despite undertaking rhetorical topics. The Greek word for “turning” gives rise to “trophies,” because spoils fixed on stakes are called tropaea; a true catacresis is a strigil hanging on a lampstand. Our grandfathers and great-grandfathers, though their words smelled of garlic and onion, were nonetheless in the best spirits. Someone is accused of being a friend to allies and an enemy to enemies, waging war so as to carry all wars home. A wish follows that plunderers fall into hatred on this very account. Manius is asked whether he is not ashamed, since at his home he sees cohorts of fellow soldiers ministering building stones to his slaves. Another asks whether “we have done nothing,” since he shines abroad the Lucanian law in broad daylight. Vulcan, shaper of new pots, prays for the aechum of the new jug; a new sieve should hang from a new peg; not even Hercules, who cleared out Augeas’ dung, is able. In the section titled “Caprinum Proelium,” nature made virtue proper to mortals while wishing the rest held in common. The “Catamitus” fragment reads simply “scabere.” “Cave Canem” describes a stream rushing headlong into a grove, dashed against a rocky cliff and becoming white. “Colymna Herculis” says he waxed and wrote over Hercules’ athla. “Cras Credo Hodie Nihil” describes how fiery fire may stir up the northern cold, and how the burning soul, unstable and changeable, greedily desires to have and not to have with a fickle heart. “Cycnus” addresses lofty temples and asks why, if clothing is needed, one tears it, and if not needed, why one wears it; why Heraclides Ponticus is wiser, who advised burning them, than Democritus, who advised preserving them in honey. “Cynicus” states that if the gods’ care does not satisfy the state, matters continue. “De Officio Mariti” holds that a wife’s vice must either be removed or endured: he who removes it makes his wife more agreeable, he who endures it makes himself better. “De Salute” has Varro say the world was not born, nor the sea. “Desultorius” describes a master’s delights—a swift phaselus, a mobile craft—loosed by a barber, and raging pirates devastating everything around. “Devicti” urges boys to hasten to live, to sport as youth allows, to love and hold the bonds of Venus.
Further Menippean Fragments
A citation from Ennius states it is better to lose life under arms than to be enslaved even once. A woman is described pulling wool with her hands while watching a pot of porridge so it does not burn. All of Rome’s women flock together, an initiation once done only at night, now indicated by a pine torch. Someone is seized by an unknown mule-driver who ruptures the ravisher’s hernias. The speaker asks whether his eyes are failing or whether he truly saw slaves in arms against masters. A steward barely thinks this sufficient for his master. Manius Curius, consul, while holding a levy on the Capitol, sold a worthless fellow when the summoned man in the tribe did not respond. To be a great censor means not to be eager to make many pay the aerarian tax. Someone stabbed himself at night with a cook’s knife, since cook’s knives had not yet been imported from Bithynia. The section “
The Divine Senate Debates Claudius’s Deification
After the emperor’s death, the first senator asked for his opinion is Janus pater, consul-elect for the Kalends of July, an afternoon consul, and a man who, however crafty, always sees ahead and behind. He speaks at length—so long that the notary cannot keep up, and the text is not reproduced—about the greatness of the gods, arguing that this honor should not be granted to just anyone. It was once a great thing to become a god, he says, but now the title has been cheapened into a farce. To avoid seeming to attack a person rather than the matter, he proposes that no one be made a god after this day from among those who bear the fruitful seed or whom the rich field nourishes; anyone made, declared, or painted a god contrary to this decree should be handed over to the Lares and flogged with rods among the new gladiators at the next show.
Diespiter Vicae Potae filius, also consul-elect and a small money-changer who supported himself by selling citizenship, is asked next. Hercules approaches him and touches his ear. He proposes that since the deified Claudius is related by blood to the deified Augustus and to the deified Augusta, his grandmother—whom Claudius himself ordered to be a goddess—and since he surpasses all mortals in wisdom, and since it is in the public interest to have someone who can, like Romulus, devour hot turnips, Claudius should be a god from this day, just as the one before him was made by the best right, and that this should be added to Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Opinions vary, and Claudius seems to be winning. Hercules, seeing his iron in the fire, runs back and forth saying: do not begrudge me, this is my affair; if you want anything later, I will do it in return—hand washes hand.
Augustus’s Speech Against Claudius
Then the deified Augustus rises to speak with great eloquence. He calls the senators as witnesses that since he became a god he has never said a word, always minding his own business. But he can no longer dissimulate or contain a grief made heavier by shame. He asks whether he made peace on land and sea, suppressed civil wars, founded the city on laws, and adorned it with works only for this. Words fail him; everything is beneath his indignation. He takes refuge in the saying of Messala Corvinus, the most eloquent man: “I am ashamed of my empire.” This man, who seems unable even to stir a fly, killed men as easily as a dog sits down. He cannot weep for public disasters while domestic evils confront him, so he passes over those and relates these. Even if his sister does not know Greek, he knows it: the knee is closer than the shin. Claudius, hiding under his name for so many years, repaid him by killing his two great-granddaughters, the Julias—one by the sword, one by starvation—and his great-grandson L. Silanus. Augustus asks Claudius why he condemned anyone before hearing the case, noting this does not happen in heaven. Jupiter, reigning so many years, only broke Vulcan’s leg and in anger hung his wife, but did not kill her. Claudius killed Messalina, whose great-uncle Augustus was as much as Claudius’s. When Claudius says he did not know, Augustus calls this worse. Claudius persecuted the dead C. Caesar; the former killed his father-in-law, the latter his son-in-law. Gaius Crassus’s son was forbidden by Gaius to be called Magnus; Claudius restored the name, then took his head, killing in one house Crassus, Magnus, Scribonia, the Tristionias, and Assario—nobles, though Crassus was so foolish he could have reigned. Augustus asks if they want to make this man a god, and challenges him to say three words quickly and make Augustus his slave. Who will worship him? Who will believe? By making such gods, they ensure no one believes they are gods. He demands vindication of his wrongs and reads his proposal: since Claudius killed his father-in-law Appius Silanus, two sons-in-law Magnus Pompeius and L. Silanus, his daughter’s father-in-law Crassus Frugi (as like himself as one egg to another), his daughter’s mother-in-law Scribonia, his wife Messalina, and countless others, he should be severely punished, given no vacation from judging, and expelled from heaven within thirty days and from Olympus within three.
Claudius’s Descent and Death
The motion is carried. Mercury drags Claudius by the neck from heaven to the underworld. As they descend the Sacred Way, Mercury asks what the crowd means—whether it is Claudius’s funeral. It was the most beautiful funeral, clearly a god’s. There were trumpeters and horn-players in such numbers that Claudius himself could hear. Everyone was happy, as if the Roman people walked free. Agatho and a few advocates wept, but sincerely. Jurists emerged from the shadows, pale and thin, as if reviving. One, seeing the advocates lament, draws near and asks who is to be blamed.
Main Arguments
The Satyricon does not argue in the manner of a treatise, but it makes a series of claims about the world it depicts, and those claims are consistent enough to be stated. The first is that money rules. When Ascyltos and the narrator dispute the ownership of the tunic and cloak, Ascyltos refuses to go to law, saying: “Who here knows us, or who will believe us when we speak? I think it best to buy it, even though it is ours, and recover the treasure with a small sum rather than descend into an ambiguous lawsuit: What can laws do where money alone reigns, or where poverty can conquer nothing? Even those who spend their lives with the Cynic’s wallet sometimes sell the truth for coins. Therefore judgment is nothing but a public merchandise, and the knight who sits in judgment approves what he has bought.” The claim is not merely that courts can be bribed but that the whole apparatus of law and judgment has been converted into a market, and that the man who understands this will act accordingly.
The second claim is that fortune is capricious and that human beings are its playthings. The narrator repeatedly attributes his reversals to fortune: the treasure returns to them by a “wondrous trick of fortune”; the recovery of the tunic frees him from a most shameful suspicion; the loss of Giton to Ascyltos is the work of the same power. Trimalchio’s epigram, recited at dinner, makes the point explicitly: “What you do not expect happens from the side—and Fortune manages our affairs from above.” The Bellum Civile expands this into a cosmic vision in which Fortune herself speaks, declaring that she hates the gifts she has given Rome and that the same god who placed these masses will destroy them. The poem’s argument is that Rome’s greatness was always a loan from a power that delights in reversal, and that the civil war is not an anomaly but the repayment of that loan.
The third claim is that luxury and appetite are self-destroying. The Bellum Civile states that usury and the use of money consumed the people, caught in a double whirlpool; that no house was certain, no body free of pledge; that arms pleased the wretched, and comforts worn away by luxury were repaired by wounds. The poem asks what arts could have moved Rome, sunk in filth and lying in sleep, by sound reason, had not frenzy, war, and lust aroused by the sword done so. The answer is implicit: nothing could have. Luxury had already done its work, and the sword was merely the final instrument. The same argument appears in the Cena in comic form: Trimalchio’s household is a machine of consumption, and every dish, every performance, every gift is designed to display wealth rather than to satisfy need. The satire is not that Trimalchio is vulgar—though he is—but that his vulgarity is the logical endpoint of a system in which everything, including taste, has become a commodity.
The fourth claim is that friendship and love are as unstable as fortune. The narrator’s verse reflection after Giton chooses Ascyltos states it directly: the name of friendship clings as long as it is expedient; the counter on the board moves the work. When fortune remains, you have friends; when it leaves, you are alone. The same logic governs the erotic relationships: Giton chooses Ascyltos because he sees two armed men and flees to the stronger; Tryphaena transfers her kisses to Giton as soon as the treaty permits; Encolpius himself, though he loves Giton, is described as being wounded by every kiss and blandishment, unable to decide whether to be angrier at the boy or the lover. The text does not moralize about this. It simply shows that in a world where money and fortune rule, affection is another form of currency, and it is spent as readily as any other.
The fifth claim, and perhaps the most unsettling, is that the stories people tell about themselves are as fictitious as the plots of comedy. The widow of Ephesus is the clearest example. Her tale is told aboard ship as entertainment, and it ends with the people marveling how the dead man went to the cross—a miracle that is in fact a fraud, a substitution of bodies that preserves the soldier’s life at the cost of the husband’s burial. The story is funny, but its humor depends on the recognition that virtue is a performance, that chastity can be traded for a meal, and that the tomb is as good a place as any for a love affair. Macrobius’s notice that Petronius delighted the hearing like comedies such as Menander and his imitators gave to be performed, or plots filled with fictitious cases of lovers, is not merely a description of genre; it is a description of the world the Satyricon depicts, in which everyone is acting a part and no part is stable.
Key Concepts
Several named ideas recur throughout the text and give it its distinctive texture. The first is the arbiter elegantiae—the arbiter of elegance—the title Tacitus says Petronius held at Nero’s court, so that nothing seemed charming and soft to Nero unless Petronius had approved it.
