Dissidence and Literature Under Nero: The Price of Rhetoricization 0415095018, 9780415095013

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Cover
Dissidence and Literature Under Nero
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction: The Rhetoricized Mentality

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DISSIDENCE AND LITERATURE UNDER NERO

DISSIDENCE AND LITERATURE UNDER NERO The price of rhetoricization

Vasily Rudich

London and New York

First published in 1997 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1997 Vasily Rudich Material from Petronius' The Satyricon. Translated by William Arrowsmith. © 1959 The University of Michigan. Used by permission of the publisher, University of Michigan Press. Excerpted from Lucan: Pharsalia. Translated By Jane Wilson Joyce. © 1993 by Cornell University. Used by permission of the publisher, Cornell University Press. Typeset in Garamond by Keystroke, Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton Printed and bound in Great Britain by Creative Print and Design (Wales), Ebbw Vale All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Librmy olCongress C'ataloging in Publication Data Rudich, Vasily, 1949Dissidence and literature under Nero: the price of rhetoricization / Vasily Rudich. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. (alk. paper) 1. Latin literature-History and criticism. 2. Politics and literature-Rome. 3. Rome-History-Nero, 54-68. 4. Rome-In literature. 5. Rhetoric. Ancient. 6. Dissenters-Rome. I. Title. PACl029.P64R84 1997 870.9'358-dc20 96-32615 CIP ISBN 0-415-09501-8

Treasure the skills acquired in the hour of terror Czeslaw Milosz, "Child of Europe"

To Joanna and Daniel Rose gratae amicitiae donum

CONTENTS

Preface Acknowledgements

Vlll XII

INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

x

1 SENECA: THE IMMORAL MORALIST

17

2 LUCAN: THE MORAL IMMORALIST

107

3 PETRONIUS: THE IMMORAL IMMORALIST

186

CONCLUSION

255

Notes Select Bibliography Index of Names Index of Subjects Index Locorum

257 360 379

384 386

x

VII

PREFACE

This study is intended as a companion volume to my earlier book, Political Dissidence under Nero: The Price of Dissimulation (Rudich, 1993), which was a discussion of how what I called "dissident sensibilities" of the Neronians could affect their actual behavior; this time, I make an effort to examine how the same sensibilities became manifest in the texts they wrote. Twentieth-century criticism has offered, among others, two opposing hermeneutic doctrines, both politically tainted, which continue to remain influential. The conservative school of Leo Strauss postulates that all major texts in our cultural heritage are written in "code," with the purpose of protecting elitist authors from attacks on the part of the hoi polloi, the "uninitiated," so that the recovery of those texts' meaning would necessarily require a specialized interpretive procedure. In principle, this position makes all such artifacts reducible to one "ideal" text that constitutes the ultimate and perennial Truth so far as it is accessible to intellectual inquiry. I On the other pole, one finds reader-response criticism, mostly espoused by the radical scholars. In its extreme form, as in certain writings of Stanley Fish, this approach is taken to the point where the relevance of the author to the author's own text is altogether dismissed in favor of the role of what is called the "interpretive community." This means that the text has no meaning except the one imposed upon it by an omnipotent individual or collective reader who is in fact no less a construct than the omniscient author of the Straussians. In principle, this position militates against any hierarchy of values and invalidates the quest for truth which is, after all, characteristic, in one sense or another, of any human culture. 2 Predictably, neither of these extremist views, that is, "absolutization of the author" and "absolutization of the reader," accords with common sense. Furthermore, in the final analysis, the opposites seem to converge in disregard of the text's integrity or in willful manipulation of its actual contents, thus subverting the very premise of hermeneutics. I It stands to reason that the basic hermeneutic triangle must remain inviolable: it consists of the text pertaining both to the author, and to the reader, and mediating between the two, and none of the three can be undermined without detriment to the whole. The two extremes provide for a rich spectrum of interpretive attitudes in Vlll

PREFACE

between, ranging from the Constanza school concerned with the aesthetic of reception (Hans Robert Jauss) and the theory of aesthetic response (Wolfgang Iser) to the now fashionable New Historicism. 4 I conceived the present volume in terms of a practical, though modest, contribution to that spectrum, and as complementary rather than polemic. This said, I still feel it imperative to downplay much of the post-modernist critical procedures, with their privileging of the original over the reasonable, so far as they reflect not on the time-related (or perennial) constituents of literary phenomena and their appreciation, but rather on the peculiarities of today's cultural vogue. It would help to recall an injunction to an interpreter, issued by Hans Robert Jauss (who is no friend of the old historicism), not to "translate the meaning of the text into a foreign context, that is, to give it a significance transcending the horizon of meaning and thereby the intentionality of the text."'> This is one reason why in what follows I deliberately set limits to the complexities of theoretical speculation and its effects on my treatment of the material. The other is the need to prevent discourse on theory from continuing ad infinitum, as well as from becoming exceedingly abstruse. This last concern is responsible also for my effort to minimize the use of critical jargon, and I hope that a few supplementary terms that I feel bound to introduce will prove lucid to both scholarly and lay readers. That it is impossible to achieve historicist objectiviry in interpreting the texts from the past, since every interpreter is subsumed by his or her own immediate historical and cultural context, is by now hardly a subject of dispute. 6 Even though in this volume I have made every effort to distance myself from my own life's experience, I remain fully aware of the fact that my choice of agenda and the mode of discussion are informed by the double perspective which evolved as the result of the twenry-five years when I lived in the former Soviet Union (where a novel about Nazi Germany or, for that matter, the Sassanian kingdom of Iran, could be easily read both by dissidents and censors as an indictment of the existing regime), and the further twenty years spent in American academia. This pertains to my use of the term "dissident" which has been objected to by some critics and reviewers who thought it a misnomer. Indeed, the Imperial Romans had no word for political dissidence, which is not surprising since it is a condition that it was hardly advisable to discuss in public. As I have mentioned elsewhere, no such word existed even in modern Russian, until the term "dissident" was imported from the West in the late 1960s during the rise of the human rights movement: when I first spotted it, used in a pejorative sense by a Soviet newspaper, I thought that it referred to a Protestant religious sect. 7 Definitions often create problems and may even hinder the flow of an argument, but those are inconveniences one must bear. Consequently, I have only to reiterate that I am using this term in a broad technical sense, and for the sake of expedience: in this, as in my earlier book, "dissident" means an individual suffering from a conflict between personal ideals and the political realities of the time. I realize that in the United States a "dissident" is usually the one who IX

PREFACE

speaks up; this was not the case in Russia under the Communists where those who thought of themselves as "dissidents" felt fearful, and preferred, more often than not, to keep silent. Not only does this graphically expose the contrast berween the open and the closed society, but it makes us pause and ponder on the paradox of the dissident mind and its operation under a repressive regime when dissidence by no means excludes a show of opportunism. Thus the range of dissident sensibilities may extend from revolutionary to self-deprecatory. And since the inner life of our mind cannot but resist an outside scrutiny, the dissident tension within an individual, unless it is made open in some act, becomes recognizable only through its indirect manifestation in one's conduct or writings. This is not to deny, however, the prominence at any point in history of true believers, or conformists and panegyrists of all sorts who are prepared to identifY their interests with the policies of the powers that be, and of whom the poet Calpurnius Siculus may serve as the Neronian example. My original design for this project was to cover all major genres that survived from the literature written under Nero: essay, tragedy, epic, fiction, and satire. But in the course of my struggle with the problems of format and logistics I have had to make, regrettably, certain strategic decisions narrowing down the scale of the book's argument. One such matter concerns Seneca's tragedies: a meaningful and detailed discussion of them requires no less space than that of his prose; it would have prolonged the chapter on him beyond any reasonable bounds, and upset the balance of contents for the entire narrative. Senecan tragedy constitutes indeed a special theme that merits a separate treatment. Rather than examining it superficially, I thought it better, for the time being, to leave it out altogether. H In contrast, Persius' literary output cannot compare, either in its size or in its significance, with that of Seneca, Lucan, and Petroni us, and he was the only one who died from natural causes. Furthermore, unlike the other three, he did not belong to the senatorial order and did not need to share with it the peculiar mixture of fear and duty as regards participation in the affairs of state. Although the available biographical evidence seems to place Persius firmly within the dissident ambience, his writings yield almost no commentary, even implicitly, on the politically noxious climate of the times. 9 A subtle mockery of Caligula's sham triumph in AD 40 over the Germans (6, 41 ff.) is the only point at which he comes close to reflecting critically on the Principate as a form of government. Thus, in view of this book's scope, Persius' oeuvre, stylistically convoluted and often obscure, stands apart and demands a somewhat different interpretive approach from the one I pursue elsewhere in the book. It is on these grounds that, after a long period of doubt, I determined not to include a chapter entitled "Persius: The Moral Moralist" in the final version of this study, even though it existed in the earlier drafts: against the rich background of Seneca, Lucan, and Petronius, it would inevitably come as an anti-climax. Lucan is an obvious choice of a Neronian poet, and his work offers a matrix for exploring poetry in terms of dissident sensibilities manifest therein. In this respect, the uncle's plays can be subjected to the same, or similar, analysis as the x

PREFACE

nephew's epic: Seneca's plays strike one, after all, as more poetic than dramatic, and were designed, in agreement with the period's practices, for recitation rather than performance. Petroni us stands both for fiction and satire. I hope that, together with the section on Seneca's Apocolocyntosis, the inquiry into the intricacies of the Satyricon will compensate for the absence of Persius from this study. My choice of both issues and texts to concentrate on is perforce selective. The scope of the material is daunting, and my critics will judge whether it is feasible to follow one particular line of scrutiny through the labyrinth of Seneca's prose alone, not to mention Lucan and Petroni us. Although I repeatedly need to elaborate on some well-known and/or controversial passages, sometimes I prefere to cite less familiar ones if they help to illustrate a point. One major aspect of study that I sought almost wholly to forgo is the Quellenforschung. This is due, in the first place, to the existing volumen of fine scholarship regarding the sources of and influences on each of the three authors under consideration. On the other hand, this book does not aim at establishing a philosophical and literary genealogy of a text or an author. Rather, it suggests, in terms of the dissident complex, that the very choice in the text of this, and not that, earlier model to draw on must reflect the political sensibilities of the author. This accounts for the lesser concern with intertextuality: the weight of my interest rests not on the interaction between the texts, or the "anxiety of influence" (although the term would have applied, for example, to Lucan's engagement with Virgil), but in the mode of how these texts, written by three uniquely diverse authors, manifest the Zeitgeist. In what follows I endeavor, by eschewing the extremes of both literalism and imagination, to expose the unfamiliar in literary discourse, which is canonized by the centuries of transmission as Silver Latin, and - conversely - to discern behind its idiosyncrasies a recognizable experience. It is my hope that this study will both enhance and qualify our sense of cultural continuity and further explore the relationship of the historical and the universal; whether it succeeds in this task is for the reader to decide

XI

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As was the case with my earlier volume, this book would have never seen the light of the day without the beneficent intervention of Gordon Williams, a paragon of scholar, mentor, and friend to whom lowe my primary gratitude. His teaching and writing determined to a considerable degree my perception of the Silver Latin texts. His comments on and criticisms of the narrative were numerous and illuminating; his tireless editing of my flawed English invaluable; and his encouragement never failed. Thomas Cole scrutinized the manuscript at various stages of its progress and is responsible for several crucial insights as regards both the form and substance of my argument. Zlatko Plese, Claude Rawson and the late Lowry Nelson read the text in full and contributed much to its improvement. Victor Bers, Marie Borroff, Elaine Fantham, John Herington, Louis Dupre, Giuseppe Mazzotta, Fergus Millar, Steven Smith, and James Tatum kindly agreed to look into individual chapters, and I greatly benefited from subsequent discussions. In terms of scholarly exchange, I took advantage of interest and advice on the part of many classicists as well as colleagues in other fields of humanities, among them, in America: Glen Bowersock, Paul Bushkovitch, Chin Annping, Jeffrey Cohen, Jane Crawford, Mary Depew, Bernard Frischer, Brian Fuchs, Herbert Golder, Carin Green, Thomas Greene, Cyrus Hamlin, George Hersey, Ralph Hexter, Leslie Jackson, Robert Jackson, Donald Kagan, Ramsay MacMullen, Lawrence Manley, John Matthews, Michael Meckler, Ronald Mellor, Dorothee Metlitski, Nellie Oliensis, David Quint, Fred Robinson, Steven Rudy, George Schoolfield, Jonathan Spence, Edward Stankiewicz, Alexander Ulanov, Tomas Venclova, Heinrich von Staden, Robert Watson, and Robin Winks; in England: Miriam Griffin, Niall Rudd, Gocha Tsetskhladze, and Thomas Wiedemann; and in Russia: Sergei and Tatiana Daniel, Aleksei Egorov, Rostislav Evdokimov, and Dmitri Panchenko. In terms of intellectual experience that enriched my perspective on both dissidence and literature, I profited from conversations with Lev Anninskii, Galina Belaya, Sir Isaiah Berlin, Sheri Berman, the late Joseph Brodsky, Elio Colagioia, Myrra Ginsburg, J. M. Coetzee, Larissa Haskell, the late Yuri Ivask, Polina Klimovitskaya, Aleksandr Kushner, Rita Lipson, Pavel Litvinov, the late Xli

ACKNOWLED(;EM ENTS

Elena Millior, Dame Iris Murdoch, the late Alexis Rannit, Tatiana Rannit, Gideon Rose, Felix Roziner, Nadezhda Rykova, David Shrayer-Petrov, Galina Starovoitova, and Eduard Sztein. I received generous help, both professional and practical, from Russell Ahrens, James Beldock, Mario Erasmo, Barbara Gajewski, Alexander Hvatsky, Wilkins Poe, Galina Sokolovskaya, Nicholas Tustin, and Jay Williams. I am particularly fortunate in my friends who protect me with a wall of affection against any possible assault of adversity. The friendship of Alexander and Elena Poznansky and the company of little Philip proved a continuous source of joy and comfort. Igor Frenkel and Marina Kostalevsky observed my work-in-progress with warm enthusiasm and reassuring faith in the value of the whole project. And I deeply appreciate all kinds of support provided by Elizabeth and William Beinecke, Mary and William Markle, and, above all, Joanna and Daniel Rose to whom this book is dedicated. lowe a special debt to Richard Stoneman and my editors Eleanor Jackson, Kim Richardson, Richard Wilson and Ruth Schafer at Routledge for their patience in regard to the belated delivery of this book's manuscript and their commitment to see it published, and I naturally accept full responsibility for any deficiency this book may contain. Vasily Rudich New Haven, April 1996

XUl

INTRODUCTION The rhetoricized mentality

Any inquiry aimed at an elucidation of the true political opinions of the Neronian authors on the evidence of their texts confronts a series of difficulties. In the first place, there is the fact that the repressive character of the regime sometimes impelled these authors to express themselves "in code."1 And since we are lacking their frame of reference rooted in the experiences of their everyday life, all our attempts at "decoding" will, inevitably, be flawed. But an even greater problem is the contradictory nature of these texts themselves where, within a single discourse, different, on occasion even mutually exclusive, opinions are offered with equal force, as if each of them represents the authentic view of the author. They do not meet our expectations of consistency, expectations which in fact retroject our own mental habits. It is no surprise then that many modern specialists who devise complex arguments in order to clarify the confusion and reconcile contradictions in these texts, ultimately fail to do so. Our pursuit of consistency in the service of "ideology" is a somewhat different enterprise from the quest the Neronian writers were engaged in. This is why in the treatment of these matters I prefer to avoid both the term and the concept of "ideology" as potentially misleading. The following discussion, purporting at least to describe this phenomenon accurately, is necessarily hypothetical. It is based on several assumptions relevant to the diverse aspects of Imperial Roman culture. An empirical proof of these assumptions would be an altogether different scholarly project. But the point of departure of my argument is a matter of consensus: it is the recognition of the highly rhetorical character of Silver Latin literature. 2 From the time of its earliest attestation in Homeric epic Greek eloquence manifested a tendency to emphasize manner of expression, that is to say, form and style over its matter, the contents of the argument. This is a natural feature of human social communication, and characteristic, to a greater or lesser measure, of any cultural environment.·3 But with the arrival of classical rhetoric a framework was provided which, if needed, could endow this attitude with a certain amount of theoretical justification. 4 Logically pursued, however, these practices inevitably start to defy logic: mutually exclusive pronouncements - even within a single discourse - could be argued by the same speaker and with equal brilliance, 1

INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

which applies to the peculiar Greek genre of "contrasting arguments" (dissoi logoi).) It is this that inspired in part the famous Protagorean statement: "Man is a measure of all things." And at times this preferential treatment of manner over matter can turn into a mental habit and significantly contribute both to the author's perception of reality and to the reader's response to the text. This process of habituation results in what I have chosen, for lack of a better term, to call the "rhetoricized mentality." Any rhetoric presumes a deliberative aspect as regards the form of speech. It is what in fact distinguishes the rhetorical procedure from any other. This, however, does not disallow us calling the "rhetoricized mentality" a set of mental devices that become habits primarily attuned to the manner, or style, of expression, and operate on both the conscious and unconscious planes. In the past people were less able to reflect accurately upon the characteristic mentality of their own times. After all, the concept of "mentality" is a modern product; not surprisingly, we will find little on this subject formulated or articulated in the writings of the ancient authors. 6 Its true and comprehensive appreciation, drawn from a wealth of disparate evidence, can be produced only in retrospect. Therefore, while the "rhetoricized mentality," in various disguises and proportions, may be seen as a universal phenomenon, it is the task of historical psychology to explore its idiosyncrasies and peculiarities in various cultures. In the period which is the subject of this book, it was the "rhetoricized mentality," with its emphasis on manner over matter, that encouraged nihilism of the kind that so hilariously reigns supreme in the world of the Satyricon. More ominously, it made possible Caligula's extravagant performance both as a "god" and a madman. And it greatly facilitated Nero's "artistic tyranny" with a program of "cultural re-education" of the Roman people that, according to a recent view, he seriously endeavored to implement. 7 In particular, it pertained to his use of his own image. The Princeps, by definition, must excel. But if it is only manner that actually matters, then it makes little difference whether he excels on the battlefield in ancestral virtue, or on the stage in artistic genius. His possession of this latter virtue Nero never doubted, literally to his very last breath (c£ Suet. Nero, 49: Qualis artifex pereo!, "What an artist dies in me!").K And those in his audience who thought otherwise had to keep their doubts to themselves, for obvious reasons. And whatever we learn from Tacitus, or Suetonius, or Dio about anger and frustration at the Imperial histrionics felt by a conservative senator, or an intransigent soldier, or a Stoic philosopher, the delight of the crowds at such a spectacle is no trivial matter.') Despite his ultimate debacle, Nero's popularity in all strata of society, even after his death, was so widespread that Otho found it expedient to capitalize on it in his own publicity campaign, and no less than three imposters in various parts of the Empire have been recorded (Tac. Hist., 1, 78; Suet. Otho, 7; Pluto Otho, 3; cf. Dio, 64, 8, 3). In politically and culturally dynamic societies the principle of manner's precedence over matter plays a variety of roles. In fifth-century Athens, for instance, it functioned as a weapon in factional strife, or as a device in the

2

INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

refining of literary technique, and in various other ways. However, this is hardly a sufficient reason for suggesting that the rhetoricized mentality as a habitual intellectual procedure was at that time characteristic of the whole Athenian educated class.1O In an open society of this kind the eventual triumph of matter over manner is, in the final analysis, a prerequisite of that society's survival, as it transpires, for instance, in Thucydides' classic analysis of the revolution in Corcyra (3, 82).11 And it is no surprise that much of Socrates' activity was directed precisely to that very effect, though ultimately in vain. His execution can be seen as a testimony of his failure. By the end of the fourth century BC, however, the development of a rhetoricized mentality in Athens reached a point when it became counterproductive and contributed to the crisis of values and eventual collapse of democracy. Roman society offers a somewhat different pictureY The Romans received the Greek rhetorical tradition mediated by Hellenistic practice. Under the rule of Hellenistic monarchs public life was effectively stifled, which enhanced both individualism and relativism of rhetorical training. Predictably, at an early stage of its penetration in Rome, this Hellenistic rhetoric was frowned upon by the conservative senatorial authority, and pillars of society, such as Cato the Elder, who considered it an obnoxious foreign invention detrimental to the mos maiorum, the traditional code of conduct. U This latter concept, however vague and indeterminate, was assigned an origin in a pre-rhetorical past and long resisted the increasing pressure of rhetorical manipulation. The mos maiorum postulated the ideal mode of behavior for members of the senatorial order. The maintenance of the absolute meaning of these moral commandments - that is, of their non-rhetorical character - was a prominent feature of Roman outlook, in spite of frequent violations in practical politics on both the domestic and foreign scenes. By virtue of inertia and custom, the tenets of the mos maiorum, notwithstanding a slow process of disintegration in the late Republic and well into the early Empire, represented an important psychological factor and continued to exercise a firm grasp over people's minds. Whatever tribulations it had undergone by the time of Julius Caesar's dictatorship, Roman society had succeeded in preserving a large measure of self-identity: until Catiline, even revolutionaries tried to operate within the "constitutional" framework. It is true that, chiefly under the influence of Hellenistic precedents, a continuous movement in the direction of emphasising manner over matter exercised an impact upon poetry. The effects are discernible in Catullus, and, implicitly, even in Lucretius. Nonetheless, to claim that this mode of poetic discourse became predominant or pervasive in the late Republican or early Augustan periods, would still be an exaggeration. 14 In revolutionary times, however, the political spectrum naturally polarizes and the range of moral choices consequently narrows. This situation, together with Roman forensic practices, with their political and juridical components intricately interwoven, created a fruitful soil for the rapid growth of the rhetoricized mentality. The results of this are immediately recognizable in the conduct

3

INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

of factional strife, in the kind of outrageous personal invective and shameless self-justification we are very familiar with from the works of Sallust and Cicero.I'i The arrival of the Principate and its eventual consolidation brought some further dramatic changes. The cultural, and especially the political dynamics of society became largely illusory, and it is illusion that naturally allows the priority of manner over matter. Elsewhere I emphasized the fundamentally dichotomic nature of the Augustan regime: being an autocracy, it continued to present a Republican facade. 16 The divorce between verba and acta, a sort of socio-political "schizophrenia," now came to form one of the primary characteristics in both collective and individual behavior which from now on became fraught with ambivalences and ambiguities on all levels of interaction - a key factor for understanding both the history and the literature of the time. 17 As regards the upper echelon of society, this "schizophrenic" dilemma was exacerbated by the fiction of the Senate's partnership in the government while in fact it was deprived of any independence and freedom of initiative. In terms of attitudes and behavior, this state of affairs resulted in the pervasive effect of dissimulatio - the dissident means of accommodation to reality, which was the subject of my earlier book on this period. 18 This was a complex and confused condition of mind, the result of contradictory forces operating within one and the same person - intellectual, emotional, and instinctive. Under the Julio-Claudians, senatorial dissimulatio oscillated between the old behavioral stereotypes and the limits imposed on individual activity by the new power structure. Although the extent of dissimulatio was fully recognized by contemporaries, it is not surprising that it was little talked about for fear of political trouble. I') In this ambivalent juncture the development of a rhetoricized mentality answered the deep social and psychological needs of the whole educated community. It provided the regime with the means of effective, however insubstantial, propaganda, and at the same time it offered to dissidents numerous patterns for self-adjustment. By the time of Nero, this predicament was further aggravated by the reign of terror. In literature, subject to all the effects of declamatory practices within and without rhetorical schools, the triumph of manner over matter encouraged authors to sacrifice plausibility, both logical and psychological, for the sake of a surprise effect, and encouraged readers to enhance their capacity of suspending disbelief.211 An unexpected turn of thought, unpredictable imagery or vocabulary acquired, not unlike in our own times, an ever increasing value. This is reflected, for instance, in Seneca's famous sententiae, witty configurations of ideas that produce sometimes a profound, but more often a superficial, or even awkward, paradox. 21 In Lucan this tendency, extended to poetic images, resulted in numerous obscurities, and it makes the reading of Persius, some of whose passages are barely comprehensible, a particularly painful labor. Above all, this was a technique which allowed the writer at the same time to betray and deny the fact of dissimulatio, as it transpires, for instance, in the sententia from the

4

INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

letter to the Senate that Seneca wrote for Nero, and in Nero's voice, to justify Nero's murder of his mother Agrippina: "Yet I neither believe nor rejoice that I am safe" (sa/vum me esse adhuc nec credo nec gaudeo, Quint., 8, 5, 18). Despite the widespread belief of the time that the new writing was a product of cultural decline and, therefore, vastly inferior to the celebrated achievements of the past, its practitioners flourished and enjoyed much publicity. Their style, although fashionable, continued to be a subject of controversy. It caused, for instance, a forceful reaction on the part of Petronius, with his appeal for "realism" and with his attempts to satirize certain contemporary idiosyncrasies. This does not mean that Petronius himself remained immune to the general trend. In his novel plausibility was sacrificed for ulterior motives: to construct an outrageous plot and to indulge his infatuation with the grotesque. Moreover, his critique may have proceeded from the further literary "left," that is, from an even more radical point of view than Seneca's or Lucan's. When the rhetoricized mentality governs the mode of expression, the defiance of it in the name of simplicity may signify an attempt to achieve an even further level of rhetorical sophistication. Tacitus' plight, although a quarter of a century later, is no less instructive: notwithstanding an elaborate argumentation on the merits of ancient eloquence found in the Dia/ogus de Oratoribus, the historian's own dynamic and idiosyncratic style effectively undermines traditions and conventions, thereby acquiring its unique brilliance. But we are not much helped in our appreciation of the Neronians' "modernism" by reaction from the literary "right." Nor are the professorial pronouncements of Quintilian, who had his doubts on the merits and legitimacy of the new school in literature (on Seneca, 10, 1, 125 ff.; on Lucan, 10, 1,90), very enlightening. It is a sad fact that the learned critics of his ilk often were, throughout the ages, and still are, at risk of being out of step with the prevalent popular taste of the day. Whatever critical response they may have met in certain quarters, Seneca's or Lucan's enormous popularity among their contemporaries is amply attested. This suggests that the average reader shared these authors' esthetic preferences and their rhetorically saturated mental attitudes. It also suggests those readers' ability to penetrate and to unravel their often complex and obscure sententiae - which is itself a kind of "decoding" - and to disregard the implausibilities contained therein. On the other hand, this willingness to sacrifice plausibility was not as innocuous a matter as it may seem. For instance, it was by similar twists of thought or image that the the Imperial prosecutors, de/atores, displaying their fashionable eloquence, were able to effect the destruction of utterly guiltless people. Thus Eprius Marcellus could confidently claim, in defiance of logic, that Thrasea Paetus' secessio, that is, his total withdrawal from public life, was in fact proof of his treasonous intentions, punishable by death (Tac. Ann., 16,28). It is not for nothing that in one of his satires (1, 83 ff.) Persius laments the

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INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

proliferation of rhetorical argument in the courts where it began to bear on grave matters of life and death. All this obviously dealt a major blow to virtue -virtus, the conventional term for the model of noble personal conduct prescribed by the mos maiorum. 22 This term, however ailing and outdated, was still in circulation. In the official missive to the Senate, Seneca the philosopher felt it appropriate to explain away Nero's matricide as a matter of expediency (Tac. Aml., 14, 12). The senatorial majority digested this without protest, and not merely because they had been terrorized. It is likely that most of them ceased to feel guilty. Thrasea Paetus' solitary demarche on that occasion passed with impunity, without even costing him his amicitia ("formal friendship") with Nero (ibid.).2.~ But Thrasea, as we know, was cast in an uncommon mold. The emphasis on manner produced a new appreciation of activities customarily considered obnoxious, such as flattery, adulatio, which had been earlier regarded as incompatible with the customary view of dignity (dignitas).24 Now respected and self-respecting citizens, even of dissident inclinations, such as Barea Soranus (Tac. Arm., 12, 52), could indulge in this unsavory practice, evidently without imposing a burden on their conscience or suffering loss of their reputation. One's elegance and eloquence of speech were rhetorically appreciable even in flattery, but the criteria were subjective depending on individual taste and ethics, and in consequence the habitual differences between unsuitable adulatio on the one hand, and legitimate eulogy (laudatio) on the other, were becoming increasingly blurred. Furthermore, the working of the rhetoricized mentality made adulatio reversible: its excess could be both interpreted and intended as mockery.25 As for virtus, the concept had been gradually disintegrating, and this threatened the traditional model of the universe with final collapse. The original meaning of virtus had been an irrevocable commitment to the service of the community, civitas, and now this presented irreconcilable choices for those concerned. The state and the law had now become incarnate in the person of the emperor, who thus demanded civic service from his subjects as unconditionally as did the classical res publica in the times of their ancestors. And a member of the senatorial order risked serious disapproval if under a benevolent ruler he declined to meet these official requirements and public expectations. But in the case of a ruler turning into a tyrant this issue had a different impact. A tyrant is by definition an enemy of the community. He ought to be confronted, resisted - or at the very least ignored. Therefore an honest man, even if long established family precedent required him to embark upon the ladder of offices (cursus honorum), may have felt an urge to decline, on both political and moral grounds, any role in public affairs under the rule of a tyrant. This is why the notion of virtus constituted the crux of the dissidents' moral and psychological torment. It accounts for Tacitus' anguished preoccupation with the fate of a good man under evil rule, and for Seneca's chronic quandary over whether a good man's involvement in public affairs is commendable. 6

INTRODUCTION, THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

The concept of virtusthen was not easily malleable by rhetorical manipulation; this, however, proved oflittle consequence. It could be altogether deprived of any sense or perverted beyond recognition. As a result, even Lucan, whose Cato, paragon of virtue, holds strong and most unequivocal views on the subject, goes so far as to assert that, against the background of civil strife and depending on circumstances, virtus may actually be a crime - crimen (BC, 6, 147 f.). It is hardly surprising therefore that the old-fashioned moralists, in the words of Tacitus (Hist., 4, 43) the multi bonique ("many and good"), for the most part nostalgically ineffective and ever resentful of the role played by the dynamic brand of the Imperial collaborationists, the pauci et validi ("few and strong"), professed hostility and contempt not only to the conduct or lifestyle of the latter, but also to the "new eloquence" they tended to practice. Such are, for example, the attitudes of Messala in Tacitus' Dialogus (15, 25 ff.) But even the men of this ilk were unable to disengage themselves from a vicious circle. It is not an accident that in the same Dialogus Aper, the champion of the new ways, obliquely but pointedly reminded Messala of the latter's recent brilliant defense in the senatorial court of his own half-brother, Aquilius Regulus, one of the most noxious Neronian delatores (ibid., 15).2(, During the early and short-lived Vespasianic "thaw," Regulus became the target of a vigorous impeachment campaign on account of his murderous activities under the previous regimes (Tac. Hist., 4, 42). And Messala's advocacy of him would have hardly been so successful without his resorting to that same fashionable oratorical technique he so much deplored. The matter of fact needed to be entirely overshadowed by the manner of argument in order to obscure the plain truth of Regulus' being a bloodthirsty villain, and to enable his advocate to impress upon the audience the possibility, however slight, that he might have been an innocent victim of slander or circumstances. In fine, a mode of attitude that has been described here as the "rhetoricized mentality" became imbedded in the historical and cultural psychology of the period. It penetrated Roman society far enough to exercise a strong hold over the minds and sensibilities of the educated classes, and even their behavior. And it is hardly an overstatement to suggest that its emphatic relativism contributed much to the final breakdown of values and the pervasive moral corruption of the age that our authorities so unanimously lament. By definition, the rhetoricized mentality is indifferent to truth and falsity and resists any attempt at consistency. It weakens one's philosophical convictions and helps to exorcize, in literary or other form, one's secret and shameful demons by means of cynical or moralist discourse. And within the Julio-Claudian ambience of intellectual confusion, the rhetoricized mentality and dissimulatio reinforced each other. Not unlike dissimulatio, the rhetoricized mentality operated both on the conscious level, as a strategy to attain a particular purpose, and unconsciously, by the force of an acquired habit, as an immediate intuitive response to a particular problem - although in retrospect, the conscious and unconscious levels of its operation frequently seem indistinguishable.

7

INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

The above argument should not be misconstrued along the lines advocated by French structuralism and post-structuralism, with its fashionable emphasis on the verbal medium considered as primary determinant of modes of thought and social behavior which is, to my mind, not only metahistorical but also antihistorical. 27 What is here understood by "rhetoricized mentality" is only one of many constituents of a complex politico-cultural situation. It evolved in close conjunction with a variety of major developments, not the least significant being the emergence of a self-contradictory power arrangement invented by Augustus. This "schizophrenic" framework had to be perceived, interpreted, and responded to in a "schizophrenic" manner. In these circumstances, as always, the multiple facets of human experience - political, social, cultural, individual continued to affect each other in intricate and unobtrusive ways, and the "rhetoricized mentality" proved an efficient mediator in their interaction. Any kind of reductionism necessarily impairs the study of history and culture, and I do not mean to suggest that the rhetoricized mentality solely determined individual or collective responses to reality, to the exclusion of all other factors. On the contrary, the complexity of the human psyche and of historical development cannot be confined to a one-dimensional perspective. In the first place, the rhetoricized mentality is never a uniform or homogeneous phenomenon. It is a matter of process and proportion. As we pointed out earlier, the definition of rhetoric implies a deliberative component, resulting from a conscious effort or a mental habit, and related to the form of utterance which provides for the fulfillment of rhetorical potential. On the other hand, the failure of the form-oriented deliberation, that is, the immediacy of statement and response, characterizes what can be called the "extra-rhetorical" aspect, or dimension, of the discourse that pertains to our deeper relationship with reality. This extrarhetorical framework reaches beyond cultural distinctions and reflects, as regards both the rational and the irrational, on the generic constituents of our psychology and experience. Whether rooted in a collective or individual subconscious, in instinct or conditioned reflex, in nature or nurture; whether based on primitive emotion, such as pleasure or pain, laughter and anger, hatred and love, or on elementary logic, or on what is known as common sense, the extra-rhetorical factor is distinguished from other determinants of our behavior by its spontaneity and lack of mediation or equivocation. This serves as the common denominator of the human species and substantiates the evasive concept of "human nature" known already to Thucydides (1, 22). An interaction of rhetorical and extrarhetorical levels takes place irrespective of whatever peculiarities an individual or a culture may reveal, but it is the extra-rhetorical background, which is unconcerned with forms, that in the final analysis makes possible communication between members of various cultures drawing on the pool of the immediate experiences they share. The denial of the universal factor in human activities on the grounds of some fashionable trends in cultural anthropology means not only a defiance of reality but, logically pursued, amounts to outright racism.

8

INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

The extra-rhetorical dimension cannot be eradicated or utterly suppressed, even if the rhetoricized mentality becomes predominant. In turn, it appears convenient to distinguish between two specific modes of extra-rhetorical operation which, for the lack of better terms, I call "non-rhetorical" and "counterrhetorical."2B Consequently, the same discourse can be appreciated and responded to on three interrelated levels of reference. The rhetorical level of writing or reading presumes a deliberative act in regard to form, that is to say, it asks the question how a discourse is fashioned or how it improves on previous treatments of the same theme. The non-rhetorical level is concerned with the literal meaning of the message and its coherence, logical or otherwise, that is, with the question of what the discourse actually tells, and whether this does or does not make sense. Finally, the counter-rhetorical level, by overriding the manner of the discourse, questions its matter's relevance to the immediate circumstances of the author and the audience. 29 Thus some well-known tale of an atrocity committed by an ancient tyrant recounted for the umpteenth time requires, in rhetorical terms, a special attention to such features as novelty oflanguage or dramatic structure; a non-rhetorical response calls for concentration on issues like cruelty, freedom, and power; but when interpreted counter-rhetorically, it invites a comparison with the similar behavior of a contemporary tyrant - be it Nero, Ivan the Terrible, or whoever else. The extra-rhetorical endeavor draws mainly on non-literary experience; it favors reality over imagination, and situation over proposition. It stands to reason that all three readings, albeit each on its own terms, are perforce selective, in accordance with individual sensibilities and horizons of expectation. The tension between the rhetorical and extra-rhetorical frameworks creates a psychological and cultural space for a fascinating interplay of collective and individual attitudes. The directions of this interplay can be multiple. A particular text, for instance, may simultaneously produce in a reader's mind different kinds of associations, often little related to each other. The one set results from the nonrhetorical procedure: all the signs that carry conventional meaning, available within a given culture, have to be ordered according to the reader's abilities of ratiocination. A different array of allusions arises from the counter-rhetorical intent in which the same or similar signs bear primarily on the reader's own private and public interests, needs or problems. While a convoluted pattern required by rhetorical exigencies creates yet another system of connotations where the existent signs acquire meanings other than the conventional and are structured along lines increasingly diverging from reality. 10 In the case of Roman society under the Julio-Claudians there was yet another factor, operating within the dichotomy of rhetorical and extra-rhetorical levels, namely, the traditional tenets of the mos maiorum, perhaps impracticable, but still in existence. At the earlier stage proudly unequivocal, the mos maiorum phraseology, as a subject of continuous rhetorical assault, suffered a process of transformation in terms of greater ambivalence and double entendre which could be exploited by both the regime and the dissidents for opposing purposes.

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INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

Nonetheless, one cannot dismiss outright the fact that the commandments of the code originally had been of an idealist and absolutist nature. This view of them, although itself rhetoricized, persisted in national memory. This accounts for "politicization of moralism" under tyrannical emperors, who by their conduct forcefully repudiated the belief in ancestral values, with the result that any moralist discourse, or even gesture, ran the danger of being taken for a sign of disloyalty and disapproval of the regime: thus Suetonius finds it plausible to write that Nero put Thrasea Paetus to death for his mere "appearence of a stern schoolmaster" (tristi paedagogi vultus, Nero, 37). As regards the dissident "code," it is true that "there was a good deal one could say without seeming to say anything at all."·I! In other words, one witnesses a pervasive discrepancy between word and thought. Properly manipulated, words acquired meanings different from the habitual. The issue may be profitably clarified by analyzing an interaction between rhetorical, on the one hand, and non- or counter-rhetorical aspects. Each of them required both the author and the reader to possess different sets of expectations: one pertaining to the course of the argument on whatever topic, with an emphasis on the manner of expression (this procedure could be at times complicated and demand a certain amount of expertise); and another pertaining to the expectations of common sense, or psychological need. Furthermore, all of these sets of associations had to operate simultaneously.·12 The Romans did in fact produce terminology accurate enough to describe the effects of this predicament, and it further reflects on the features of both dissident quandary and Imperial censorship. This is subtly illustrated by Tacitus in the opening of his Dialogus de Oratoribus. The character of Maternus is there engaged in his work-in-progress, the historical play (praetexta) Cato written with the clear purpose of criticizing the authorities: he is aware that a mere recitation of his work will offend "the minds of the powerful" (potentium animos, Dial., 2), but he does not show any sign of repentance. He rejects the advice of his friend Julius Secundus to make appropriate adjustments before publication, so that his work would not be at risk of a "prejudiced interpretation" (interpretatio prava, ibid., 3) on the part of a reader, that is, an interpretation alleging a politically subversive authorial intent. We clearly witness here two levels of mental operation. One level is rhetorical - the author is exploiting a historical exemplum, far removed in time from contemporary reality, to elaborate on the perennial and existential theme of freedom versus tyranny. Another level is counter-rhetorical: the author's immediate intention is to condemn the tyrannical practices of his own day. By a similar procedure, depending on individual tastes and attitudes, a reader's interpretation of Maternus' Cato may emphasize the rhetorical level, that is, an emulative treatment of a familiar moral and philosophical problem; or the counter-rhetorical, that is, its immediate relevance to the political status quo. Public preference and personal feelings, like sympathy or antipathy, determine a reader's eventual reaction, positive or negative. To simplify, one may postulate 10

INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

at least four types of reader - dissident, apolitical, loyalist, and censorious, the last being the extreme case of the one before. ll Thus, to a subversive work, like Maternus' Cato, the dissident reader, resentful of the authorities and friendly to the author, will respond with admiration, while a censorious reader, hostile to the author and supportive of the regime, will feel nothing but outrage. The rules of this "game" demand, however, that both the author and the reader be aware of the text's potential interpretations on each of these mental levels - rhetorical as well as non- and counter-rhetorical, which patterns are shaped by the Zeitgeist. If they are not aware of this, not only their integrity but their standards of intelligence ought to be questioned. To a degree, the author and the reader have to enter an uneasy relationship of reciprocal dissimulatio, and although an attempt to ascertain the measure of the author's anticipation in regard to the reader's eventual insights into his text is precarious, it is still improper to dismiss a potential, or inadvertent, effect of that text's writing and reading. Consequently, it seems fair to assume that when a given text is susceptible to any political interpretation, it may betray something of its author's dissident sensibilities, be it deliberate or not. The term interpretatio prava, employed by Maternus' friend, denotes the phenomenon known in a modern totalitarian society as "uncontrollable subtext."'4 The "uncontrollable subtext" emerges when a subversive allusion, although not explicit, is assumed to be evocable or familiar to a reader's mind in virtue of the mere subject matter, even if this latter appears unrelated to politics altogether. Thus historical or mythological references (exempla), customary rhetorical topoi and sententiae, or even individual words may acquire allegedly pernicious overtones. The Romans were quick to imagine counter-rhetorically an immediate political reference even in texts from the past - as, for instance, when the elder Agrippina quoted Achilles' indictment of Agamemnon in Homer to mean Tiberius (Dio, 59, 19). Finally, the historical exigencies of Julio-Claudian rule made certain general themes, for example freedom and servitude, politically markiert, that is to say, loaded in the eyes of contemporaries and the initiated with provocative meaning. 1 ,) To them under Nero were added art, literature, and sexuality which became the chief preoccupation of the emperor and his court. This produced an explosive convergence of political, moral, artistic, and sexual issues so that a critical comment on any of them ran a risk of being taken for an overall stricture of the authority in charge. The peculiar "theatricalization" of public life, which seems to have begun earlier under Caligula and reached its peak with Nero on stage in his capacity as an Imperial actor, must have further enhanced the ability of the Roman audience to read a subversive innuendo into any kind of cultural performance.'(' The interpretatio prava could be immediate or mediated, arising from contemporaneous or retrospective reading. But insomuch as we lack means to account accurately (even as regards an imaginary "ideal reader") for the effects and relationship of secondary, tertiary, and other readings of the same text aimed at penetrating its deeper layers and inferences, it seems prudent to simplify the matter and argue in terms of what (and how) in a given text could have been 11

INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

conceivably readY On the other hand, it must be remembered that owing to the cultivation of memory (which is all but obsolete now) and the custom of oral delivery, the ancients were able to grasp subversive nuances at the first reading or performance - witness Nero's sudden anger at Lucan publicly reciting his work-in-progress, the Bellum Civile (Suet. Luc., 11 f.): the emperor must have found in it something offensive, although modern scholars still cannot agree on what that would have been. lx Tacitus' dialogue, set in the times of the "liberal" Vespasian, poignantly demonstrates the plight of a Roman creative intellectual. Maternus reacts to his friend's cautious advice with stubborn contumacia, intransigence. He suggests that his next play, Thyestes, will be even more offensive (DiaL, 3): although in its theme much less political or explicitly subversive than the earlier Cato, it was apparently able to offend the powerful all the same. The Latin idiom for the particular and conscious stand that Maternus exhibited would be animus nocendi, "an intent to do harm."YJ It could be displayed, or disguised, through multiple devices, such as a "pregnant omission" (aposiopesis) or an "apophatic" statement (a contrario) which describes political reality not as it is but as it is not, and thus alerts the reader to potentially dissident inference. This may reverse the effects of the rhetorical and extra-rhetorical reading in terms of subversion. Thus the aposiopesis becomes suspect only if it is rhetorically interpreted; non-rhetorically (that is, literally) read, it would go unnoticed. The same is true regarding the a contrario argument: from the non-rhetorical viewpoint, the praise of an emperor for qualities not his own had to be either taken at face value or dismissed as a lie. Thus we hear that when Nero praised in public eulogy his predecessor's intellect, the audience burst into laughter (Tac. Ann., 13, 3). Irony is an intentional conceit by definition, and risks being lost. Its appreciation depends on the combined rhetorical and counter-rhetorical responses. Their interplay permits an exercise of what may be called "strategic irony" serving both as an effective weapon and as a means of obfuscation. 40 Nor should one underrate the oral and performative aspect of Roman literature: as a rule, a new work was first publicly recited by the author who, according to his abilities, could control his audience, that is to say, lead or mislead it with the help of gesture, emphasis, or intonation. The interplay of animus nocendi and interpretatio prava was evidently a perplexing matter. This problem and its aftereffect in each case must be discussed in terms of intent and response, and the nature of both, although rooted in the interaction of rhetorical and extra-rhetorical mental levels, is not always easy to determine. Maternus represents one pole of the spectrum: he makes no secret of his animus nocendi and is prepared to face the reaction of the audience, whether friendly or hostile, with all predictable consequences. Ovid should be placed at the opposite extreme: every line of his Tristia, 2 screams of his innocence. He insists that his work was misread, that is, suffered from interpretatio prava, by an evil-minded unspecified person, "a more cruel enemy" (crudelior hostis, Trist., 2, 77) close to the emperor, and that this malicious misinterpretation led to the 12

INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

poet's disgrace. If Maternus mentally identified himself with his Cato (Dial., 2), Ovid is so much awed by the emperor's anger that he comes close to identifYing with his own censor, and cries: "It made it difficult not to become my own enemy!" (vix tum ipse mihi non inimicus eram, Trist., 2, 83). "Code depends on decoders."41 The nuances decisive for a safe balance of animus nocendi and interpretatio prava had to be perceptible to contemporaries, although by no means always to us. And the decoder need not necessarily have been a sympathetic reader and fellow-dissident. He could be like Ovid's "more cruel enemy," a henchman of the emperor, or even an emperor himself. That means that the author might eventually find himself in real trouble, which brings up the question of Imperial censorship. Under the Julio-Claudians censorship functioned in a very different manner from the present age. Its main characteristic was total arbitrariness and unpredictability. This was much unlike the totalitarian countries of this century where one finds official (explicit or implicit) guidelines for everyone to know what can and what cannot be discussed in print. It seems that there was no official line that the Imperial regime would consistently follow. It is ironic that the established standards of censorship which are often recorded in modern times can help a creative intellectual: he feels a firmer ground, knowing the themes or the vocabulary to be avoided. Under the Principate censorship evidently did not exist as an institution. There was no procedure by which the authorities could prevent the publication of a particular text, however offensive. Nonetheless, all this does not mean that there was a lesser chance of literary persecution. We know about book-burning, initiated by Augustus himself (cf. Sen. Rhet. Contr., 10, praef. 6 ff.). But such persecutions could not be a preventive measure - in the absence of a specialized apparatus and of what we would call now an appropriate ideology. At best, they could serve as a deterrent, but were usually exercised as a punishment. Since there were no official guidelines to follow, the writers were at the mercy of any malevolent decoder close enough to the emperor to denounce them or to make insinuations against them. This condition created a peculiar sort of suspense, hardly comprehensible to a modern. And it explains why the same work could be treated differently by different rulers under different circumstances. Thus the Annales of Cremutius Cordus were approved by Augustus, in spite of the author's praising Brutus and calling Cassius "the last of the Romans." The same book gave Tiberius (or Sejanus) a pretext for the author's destruction (Tac. Ann., 4, 34 ff.), but was again allowed to circulate under Caligula (Suet. CaL, 16). There were presumably scores of tragedies on the already mentioned topic of the Atreus-Thyestes enmity (we know of at least three), but only a work by one Mamercus Scaurus proved fatal to its creator. Tacitus (Ann., 6, 29) implies that in this case Macro acted in respect to Tiberius as Ovid's nameless adversary did in respect to Augustus by alleging Scaurus' animus nocendi; Dio (58, 24, 3 f.) makes the emperor himself recognize his own image in the play's villain. From the dissident or censorious perspective, it became irrelevant whether the

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INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

alleged subversive intent was real or imaginary. In the latter event, a truly pathetic case could emerge when interpretatio prava asserted animus nocendi, although the author's purpose was just the opposite. The most flagrant example of this was the affair of Clutorius Priscus. A victim of his own stupidity, he produced in advance a poetic lament on the expected death of the younger Drusus, who subsequently happened to recover. The unfortunate poetaster, instead of receiving a hoped for award for loyalty, was accused of treason and mercilessly executed (Tac. Ann., 3, 49 ff.). The cruel sentence reflected the paranoid condition of the society as well as the endemic penchant for magical superstition. The correlation between the established rhetorical practices and the recurrent charge of animus nocendi was uncertain and depended on the circumstances. If the emperor was in a nasty mood, a rhetorician could be sent into exile, or even put to death for a school exercise on tyrannicide (cf. Dio, 59, 20, 6; 67, 12, 5), and it did not matter that before and after dozens of his colleagues safely indulged in the same activity, grounded in a respectable tradition. The great lawyer Cassius Longinus was impeached by Nero personally for having in his house the inscription duci partium ("to the party leader") on a statue of his ancestor, the tyrannicide (Tac. Ann., 16,7). Yet one Titinius Capito, a successful equestrian under Domitian, ran into no trouble for worshipping the images of Brutus and Cassius in public (Plin. Epist., 1, 7). In any event, the conjunction of animus nocendi with interpretatio prava produced manifold and unpredictable effects. The animus could be intentional and the interpretatio, whether by a sympathetic or antipathetic decoder, could correspond with the author's expectations. There also could be an intentional animus but carefully disguised in a hope to prevent, as far as possible, an offensive interpretatio. This may seem illogical and counterproductive: after all, the purpose of animus is by definition to solicit interpretatio. Psychologically, however, this self-defeating motivation is valid enough - the author displays his animus in secret to his own private satisfaction. As for a desired interpretatio, there must always be an irrational hope that it would be entertained only by a fellow dissident, and never enter the mind of an adversary. This, of course, has chiefly to be self-delusion. But it is true that in such a case a censorious reader would have had to be intelligent enough and in a proper emotional frame to discern a subversive spirit. Ironically, it may even happen that animus nocendi is concealed so well that it is never detected at all, whether by a dissident or by a censor. Furthermore, interpretatio prava may allege the presence of animus nocendi where it was not, at least consciously, intended by the author. In the case of a dissident decoder that results in series of misunderstandings. For instance, the author may be inadvertently ascribed by a decoder to the latter's own political camp, to which, properly speaking, the former would not care to belong. Such a claim made public, even if only in whispers, would be to the author's detriment. A censorial decoder, by charging the text with animus which was not there, would be able, if supported by a superior authority, easily to work the author's destruction. And there would be little chance to prevent the ruin of an innocent, since

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INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

no procedure could exist for establishing in every case the truth about authorial motives and intentions. This could not but affect the elusive phenomenon of self-censorship rooted in the author's automatic anticipation of potential censureY To prevent the latter, one might have resorted to the defence mechanism of "plausible deniability" which, however, could operate only if the hostile interpretatio prava was actually spelled out. Otherwise, it made no point, but this does not mean that the author would not care: more often than not, the combined efforts of a rhetoricized mentality and a repressive regime help to turn self-censorship into a habit. It is again Ovid's writings from exile that exemplifY a pathetic attempt at "plausible deniability" of a charge he was either unable or unwilling to articulate, and the attendant air of suspense. If allowed at all, the refutation depended on circumstances, which were unpredictable, and its probability of success was small. 4.l The vagaries of this entire predicament are made palpable in the anecdote reported by Dio about the clever opportunist orator Domitius Afer (cons. AD 39, cf. Tac. Ann., 14, 19) which is worth quoting at some length. At the time in question, Mer had set up an image of the emperor and had written an inscription for it to the dfect that Gaius [Caligulal in his twenty-seventh year was already consul for the second time. This vexed Gaius, who felt that the other was reproaching him for his youth and for his illegal conduct. Hence for this action, for which Mer had looked to be honored, the emperor brought him at once before the Senate and read a long speech against him ... And he would certainly have put Mer to death, if the latter had entered into the least competition with him. As it was, the man made no answer or defelce, but pretended to be astonished and overcome by the ability of Gaius, and repeating the accusation point by point, praised it as if he were a mere listener and not himself on trial. When the opportunity was given him to speak, he had recourse to entreaties and lamentations; and finally he threw himself on the ground and lying there prostrate played the suppliant to his accuser, pretending to fear him more as an orator than as Caesar. (Dio, 59, 19, 2 ff.) The artifice worked: Caligula, in the belief that he was a superior speaker, pardoned the man. All in all, according to the evidence, the writers - and orators - of the period, whatever their personal politics or purpose, were acutely aware of the fact that any passage of their writings could be subjected at any point to "prejudiced interpretation" by a benevolent or malevolent, dissident or censorious, reader. Consequently, any text or speech could theoretically be charged with an "intention to do harm." This means that a Neronian author had to step cautiously with an eye for every word coming from his pen when he was alone, or from his mouth - both in official utterance, and idle talk, in circulis et conviviis ("circles and dinner parries," Tac. Ann., 3,54), where much of public opinion, existimatio, 15

INTRODUCTION: THE RHETORICIZED MENTALITY

was fomented. 44 It also means that he had to establish appropriate political and social connections in order to protect himself from the emergence of a crude/jor hostis among his readers able to put an end to his literary, and perhaps all other, activities. But as a means ofsafeguard, personal connections were precarious. They depended on many things, from the sex appeal of one's wife to a change of government. This is why under these circumstances the state of anxiety became endemic, and a Neronian intellectual was doomed to carry it to the very end. 4s

16

1

SENECA The immoral moralist

1

Seneca's extant work is voluminous, and he wrote in many different genres: consolation, philosophical diatribe, political treatise (De Clementia), scientific monograph (Naturales Quaestiones), moral epistles, tragedy, and finally "menippean satire." One might expect chat this diversity would facilitate our comprehension of his personality. In fact, actual study betrays this expectation. 1 Struggling through the jungle of Seneca's elaborate and repetitious periods, admiring or disapproving his pointed sententiae, one may eventually arrive at the stage of confusion close to despair. The voices we hear are so dissimilar, even in the same work, their author seems so protean chat it is no wonder the debate on some attributions ( Octavia, Hercules Oetaeus, Apocolocyntosis) never ceases. It is true that in different contexts Seneca advocates different, sometimes even mutually exclusive, views. He may appear as an opponent and an adulator, an inflexible Stoic sage and a sly opportunist. But the problem remains to what extent these contradictions manifest a tortuous debate within the self and co what extent they relate to his own ambitious desire, by satisfying the expectations of every reader, co win the greatest literary reputation of the age.2 In addition, there are at least three major factors to be taken into account in any attempt to assess Seneca's own thinking from the evidence of his writing: the political repercussions, the tenets of Stoicism, and the elaborate rhetoricized mentality characteristic of the times. Studying Seneca's biography hardly helps the situation. le is clear that we are dealing with a remarkable man, much loved, bur also much hated, as well as a skillful dissimulator. His contemporaries did not fail to see a discrepancy between his message and his personal conduct, and his enemies exploited this gap. His defensive stand in De Vita Beata indicates that attacks on his character like those of the delator Suillius Rufus (Tac. Ann., 13, 42) were by no means irrelevant and could touch upon vulnerable spots. Even the most intransigent of his later apologists have never succeeded in exonerating him fully from the charge of duplicity. But the man was much more than that, and it is a testimony to his greatness chat heated debate about his merits and demerits, both within

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and without academe, continues to the present day.j He belonged with those rare individuals whose vices contrast not only with their powerful and creative minds, but also with the gift of remarkable charisma. In Seneca's case the loyalty and admiration of friends and disciples led to a kind of canonization. An actual cult of him was created by the refusal to read his work critically, a refusal much 1 in the vein of post-Flavian martyrology. i The spell of this image combined with his moralistic ardor moved his later unknown Christian admirer to forge his fictitious correspondence with St Paul.~ And he is the only pagan included by St Jerome in his De Viris Illustribus (12). The two opposite traditions on Seneca that one finds blended in our sources are equally deceptive because they are so extreme. In Dio they are both present, and this results in psychological implausibility; in Tacitus the picture is more complex but ultimately equally confusing. likely to suspect in it an tlllinms nocendi they did not care fc.)r,even if they learned to admire it as a literary masterpiece, which would have resulted. on the part of both dissident and censorious readers, in frustration and ultimate disappointment. What remains is to inquire whether the Stt~vricon (and, hy extension, the entire Neronian ambience) can be viewed (as some modern interpreters wish to argue) as exhibiting the "Saturnalian" spirit, chat is to say, be discussed in terms of what Mikhail Bakhtin calls "the carnivalesque," with its attendant characteristics, such as lack of moral responsihiliry, rhe refusal to distinguish between che positive and negative. approval and disapproval. the deliberate scatological blasphemy - all serving the apotropaeic purpose to re-enhance the ever-nascent forms of life and confront the totality of life's dissolurion.' 1 ' As one major article on Petronius demonstrated, dearh is indeed omnipresent in his novel and is intimately linked with the themes of luxury and sex. In contrast to the medieval or Renaissance carnivalesque, however. sexuality is here given little or no chance co defeat mortality, its chief metaphor being not orgasm but impotence." This 1

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is not surprising: to Bakhcin, the carnival culture can exist wholesome and potent solely in the atmosphere of folk spirituality and vibrant religious faith. That is, as follows from my analysis, decidedly not the case with the world of the Satyricon, or of Neronian society at large. Rather, the Arbiter's menippean performance comes close to resembling Bakhtin's formulation of the "modernist grotesque" in which, ironically estranged, man and life cease to reciprocate.')')

5 By rejecting the mos maiorum as a repository of judgments on human behavior, Petronius, a conscientious artist, must have found himself in a sort of void: one cannot undertake any narrative or discourse without some kind of attitude to the world as an apriorial point d'appui, even if artistic purpose ultimately transcends one's intellectual designs. Esthetical criteria seem to have replaced, within Petronius' personal value system, the traditional ethical standards, although from what has been said it clearly follows that his estheticism, in the final analysis, must have arisen as a result and product of his prior moral concerns. This sort of replacement is not without difficulties and dangers, both philosophical and artistic. After all, an esthetic evaluation either depends on the prevalent vogue of the time, or turns increasingly subjective. In both cases it ultimately derives from matters of taste, public or private. For the author of the Satyricon, "taste" is not an approximation of, but a substitution for moral principle.% As was stated earlier, since it turned into a major preoccupation of the emperor and his retinue, literature, like sexuality, became politicized. It makes even more convoluted the task of distinguishing in Petronius' literary performance between collective and individual aspects of taste. On the one hand, he must have reflected and expressed the "modernist" taste of the members of Nero's literary retinue (and, presumably, Nero's own), at one or another time including Seneca and Lucan - in the broader sense, the mode of taste characteristic of the entire Silver Latin literature. On the other hand, one realizes chat Pecronius' caste possessed highly personal, even idiosyncratic, features, running against many contemporary preferences. But owing to the Neronian "politicization of literature," these purely esthetic conflicts and problems could not but pertain to the variety of psychological, moral, and political vicissitudes which stands in need of exploration. In fact, the very beginning of the extant text offers what at first sight appears a fierce and lengthy attack on the rhetorical education of the time chat governed artistic and literary fashions: Num alio genere furiarum declamatores inquietantur, qui clamant: "haec vulnera pro libertate publica excepi, hunc oculum pro vobis impendi; dace mihi [ducem] qui me ducat ad liberos meos, nam succisi poplites membra non sustinenc"? Haec ipsa tolerabilia essenc, si ad eloquentiam 215

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iruris viam facerent. Nunc et rerum tumore et sententiarum vanissimo strepitu hoe tantum proficiunt, ut cum in forum venerint, putent se in alium orbem terrarum delatos. Et ideo ego adulescemulos existimo in scholis srultissimos fieri, quia nihil ex his quae in usu habemus aut audiunt aut vident, sed piratas cum catenis in litore stances, sed tyrannos edicta scribenres quibus imperent filiis ut patrum suorum capita praecidant, sed responsa in pestilentiam data ut virgines tres aut plures immolentur, sed mellitos verborum globulos et omnia dicta factaque quasi papavere et sesamo sparsa. Qui inter haec nutriuntur non magis sapere possum quam bene olere qui in culina habitant. Pace vestra liceat dixisse, primi omnium eloquentiam perdidistis. Levibus enim atque inanibus sonis ludibria quaedam excitando effecistis ut corpus orationis enervaretur et caderet ... Grandis et ut ita dicam pudica orario non est maculosa nee turgida, sed naturali pulchritudine exsurgit. (1, I ff) Are not the rhetoricians possessed by the tribe of furies when they cry: "I received these wounds for the sake of public liberty! On your account I lost this eye! Find me a guide who would lead me to my children! My knees are broken and do not support my frame"? Even this could be lived with, if it would pave the road for those who aspire to eloquence. But what is achieved by such inflation of things and the noise of the emptiest sentences is that when the pupils enter the court, they imagine they have been transported to another world. I think that our schools turn the youngsters into utter fools since there they neither see nor hear of ordinary matters, but deal with pirates, standing in chains on the beach, and with tyrants writing edicts in which sons are ordered to chop off their fathers' heads, and with oracles given in response to plague about the sacrifice of three or more virgins - all such honey lumps of verbiage, as if everything said and done is mixed with poppy-seed and sesame. Those who live on this kind of nourishment prove no wiser than the inhabitants of the kitchen are capable of smelling good. If you allow me to say so, you yourselves ruined any true eloquence. You may effect some trifles by means of light and inept words, but in result the fiber of your speech declines and falls ... Great, that is to say, modest oratory is never tainted or turgid, but it exults in natural beauty. The speaker is Encolpius addressing Agamemnon, the teacher of rhetoric. The emphasis of this criticism seems familiar - it centers on the gap between reality and appearance (cf. dicta foctaque), which, besides other consequences, created the world of fantasy young people were driven into by these educational procedures. 97 It is true that the topics of rhetorical exercise here mentioned do appear in the Elder Seneca's Controversiae, an entirely serious work, although some of its set oratory sounds to us quite absurd, and to Encolpius, as the quoted passage 216

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testifies. However, there may well have been a yet deeper layer beneath that discourse reaching into the very mechanism of the rhetoricized mentality. Encolpius here insists on the priority of chiefly counter-rhetorical forms of expression and perception so that they would both reflect the immediate modalities of real life. At the same time, counter-rhetorical reading of the very examples he cites reveals that they are not as innocuous as they seem: the reference to "public liberty" (pro libertate publica), for instance, might well have caught the dissident or censorious eye. And it is on record that Caligula persecuted a school rhetorician for celebrating tyrannicide (Dio, 59, 20, 6; cf. 67, 12, 5), while that emperor's own rule of terror would match well the atrocities of the imaginary despots that frequently served as a subject of declamation in the class-room. 98 As I pointed out earlier, in every epoch there exist themes, images, or even words which are marked by the historical or cultural context to invite non-rhetorical, that is, often selective and subversive, recognition. The opening discourse seems sufficiently sharp to amount to a wholesale critique of the rhetoricized mentality. At the same time, in other parallel cases, this passage also allows ironic reading as a travesty which undercuts any serious pronouncement by placing it in the mouth of an anti-hero. It can be objected chat Agamemnon, a professional rhetorician himsel£ agrees with Encolpius on essential points. It makes two of Petronius' characters express similar views, and this may reflect the author's true attitudes - a line of argument that does not contradict his own apostrophic "new simplicity" postulate. On the other hand, the figure of Agamemnon is portrayed as too equivocal to make his approval decisive. His praise of Encolpius' performance emphasizes both style and content, a telling appreciation of the latter's anti-rhetorical rhetoric. 99 The matter and manner of their exchange makes it the rhetoricized mentality's inside criticism, not an attempt to demolish it from the outside. It is not the repudiation of rhetoric in principle, but of its particular, culturally and historically, established form. Petronius' narrative idiosyncratically manifests the very discrepancy between reality and its appearances, inherent in Augustus' socio-political arrangement, that it seems to criticize: the adventurous world of the Satyricon is construed to resemble the very fantasy world of the class-room which Encolpius is shown ridiculing - it is full of implausible coincidences (e.g. 12 ff.) and such extraordinary developments as shipwreck, witchcraft, various kinds of imposture, and bizarre sex.100 Evidently in contrast to the prevailing mode of education, Agamemnon is made to argue his own program of study based on labor and discipline: Quod si paterentur laborum gradus fieri, ut studiosi iuvenes lectione severa irrigarentur, ut sapientiae praeceptis animos componerent, ut verba atroci stilo effoderent, ut quod vellent imitari diu audirent, sibi nihil esse magnificum, quod pueris placeret, iam ilia grandis oratio haberet maiestatis suae pondus. (4, 3) 217

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If they would suffer doing their work step by step so that the young students could proceed with serious reading, so that they could frame their spirits by the precepts of wisdom, with their pens keen on seizing the right words, so that they could listen carefully to what they wished to imitate, and if they could realize that nothing is magnificent that pleases the youth - then great oratory would regain its full weight and grandeur. These points would certainly have met with approval by characters like, for instance, C. Cassius Longinus, the famous lawyer renowned for his "ancient discipline" (cf. Tac. Ann., 12, 21; 16, 7) or Vipstanus Messala who is presented in Tacitus' Dialogusas a champion of a conservative educational system, but hardly by the members of Nero's entourage. 101 One doubts that Agamemnon's program was considered by Petronius, given his ironic view of ancestral virtues, a serious and viable alternative to the status quo. Any appeal to discipline seems indeed entirely out of tune with his authorial playful voice in the apostrophe arguing for "new simplicity." Rather, it appears a travesty presented in his capacity as a satirical reporter of current opinions. Rooted in strategic irony, double entendre is here in continuous operation. Although what Agamemnon says prima facie seems sensible enough, it runs against his own practices as a school teacher: not unlike Eumolpus, Agamemnon is an expert dissimulator (cf. his earlier words to Encolpius: nonftaudabo te arte secreta- "I will not deceive you by any secret art," 3, 1). He sacrifices his personal convictions to the exigencies of his trade. It is owing to the lack of commitment that his discourse strikes us as flat and commonplace, causing the mocking laughter of his listeners - an effect that is especially noticeable when, as is the case with both Imperial Rome and the present, we have often to deal with rhetoricized and devalued phrases. 102 The initial episode ends with a description of the crowd of young men ridiculing rhetoric, but later in the novel we find an ironic counterpoint to Agamemnon's study program. In a sort of "a travesty of a travesty" - not unlike the freedman Ganymede's comment on the decline of religion reflecting on Eumolpus' earlier pontifications, but in this case directly addressing the rhetorician - another of Trimalchio's fellow freedmen, a certain Echion, offers his ideas on better education. HU Starting with an attack on what he sees as Agamemnon's snobbery, he invites him in the end to visit his estate. Subsequently, he commends his sons to the teacher's attention, and here is one of those: Et iam tibi discipulus crescit cicaro meus. lam quattuor partis dicit; si vixerit, habebis at lams servulum. Nam quicquid illi vacat, caput de tabula non tollit. Ingeniosus est et bona filo, etiam si in aves morbosus est. Ego illi iam tres cardeles occidi, er dixi quia mustella comedit. Invenit tamen alias nenias, et libencissime pingit. Ceterum iam Graeculis calcem impingit et Latinas coepit non male appetere, etiam si magister eius sibi placens fit nee uno loco consistit. (46, 3 ff)

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My little one now grows to become your pupil. He can already divide by four; if he lives, you will have a ready little servant. Even in his spare time he never lifts his head up from his tablets. He is smart, and of good provenance, even if he is obsessed with birds. I just killed three of his goldfinches, and said that a weasel ate them. But he found other trifles and enjoys painting. He now has got a foothold on Greek, and he has started to grasp after Latin - not badly, even though his teacher is self-important and never stays in one and the same spot. But Echion wants his son to learn some trade, be it as a barber, or an auctioneer, or a barrister, that he "could carry to the grave with him" (quod illi auferre non possit nisi Orcus, ibid., 8), and this is what he cites as his customary exhortation in addressing this elder boy: Ideo illi cotidie clamo: "Primigeni, crede mihi, quicquid discis, tibi discis. Vides Phileronem causidicum: si non didicisset, hodie famem a labris non abigeret. Modo modo collo suo circumferebat onera venalia, nunc etiam adversus Norbanum [presumably, a well known local official] se extendic." (ibid., 8) 104 Thus I speak to him every day: "Believe me, Primigenius, whatever you learn, you do it for your own sake. See Philero the barrister? If he had not studied, he would not be able today to drive hunger far from his mouth. It was not long since chat he carried around on his back things to sell, and now he even goes so far as to oppose Norbanus." Evidently, Echion is fully convinced of the excellence of the upbringing he provides for his sons, ending up with a predictably pompous utterance: "Literature is a treasure, and a thing of art never dies!" (litterae thesaurum est, et artificium numquam moritur, ibid.) The entire monologue is a masterful exercise in social psychology reaching at the perennial constituents of a self-made ordinary man's view of life. To conclude, the opening passages of the extant text seem to exhibit consistent ambivalence regarding their subject matter. The author's strategic irony and the novel's polyphonic tendency conspired to produce an uncanny effect: one and the same message explicitly arguing counter-rhetorical attitudes and implicitly denying their importance. Given the complex rhetoricized mentality of the period, this could have been either its inadvertent result, or Petronius' deliberate device aimed at the manipulation of his audience. In the "new simplicity" apostrophe Petronius, in his own voice, succinctly enunciates his own thematic preference and stylistic principle: sermonispuri non tristis gratia ridetl quoque focit populus, candida lingua refert ("It laughs with grace, with pure and cheerful speech, and candidly reports what people do"). This leads to the much debated problems of Petronius' "realism" and alleged literary conservatism - and by extension, to the treatment of his longer pieces in verse like a clever piece on the fall of Troy and his enigmatic "mini-epic" on 219

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the Civil War inserted in the novel as a product of Eumolpus. The issue pertains to Petronius' dissident sensibilities only so far as any kind of "realistic" writing means to reflect upon the negative, including political, aspects of the status quo: thus, in principle, even an esthetic pronouncement to advocate it may become construable as political criticism in a society ruled by the "artistic tyrant." 105 Nor was the choice of subjects poeticized by Eumolpus without danger: Virgil made the end of Troy a fashionable topic which appealed to Nero's as well as others' talents, and the Civil War in itself constituted a politically explosive theme that served as a source of dissident inspiration for Seneca and, of course, for Lucan. 106 When applying the modern concept of "realism" to a classical text one should proceed with caution. Among other things, it must be understood that such matters as plausibility of the plot or excessive imagination leading occasionally to a lack of verisimilitude are not at issue. Otherwise, we would nor talk of "satirical realism," "grotesque realism," or "magical realism" as we do. All these notions presuppose substantial use of the hyperbolic and fantastic without detracting at all from the mimetic potential in each genre. 107 For the purpose of the present discussion, I define a narrative as "realistic" merely in the sense that it manifests the author's intent to record the current psychological, social, and material phenomena of everyday life. In the case of the Satyricon such authorial intent is explicitly declared in the "new simplicity" apostrophe, and it is beyond the scope of this discussion to inquire whether its narrative entirely succeeds in that task, be it by ancient or modern standards. 108 Minor "realistic" details of the novel that are politically telling will be pointed out in due course. It is rather common to treat Petronius as a literary conservative, and his style as a kind of traditional ''Atticism." It is true that Encolpius in the opening passages of the extant text criticizes contemporary rhetorical pracnces as decadent, attributing them to the invasion of Asianic verbosity: Nuper ventosa istaec et enormis loquacitas Athenas ex Asia commigravit animosque iuvenum ad magna surgentes veluci pestilemi quodam sidere afflavit, semelque corrupta eloquentiae regula ... stetit et obmutuit. (2, 7)10') It is recently that this long-winded and formless loquacity migrated from Asia to Athens, and not unlike some pestilent star it affected the spirits of youths who aspire to great things and, once the rules of eloquence had been corrupted, it came to a standstill and turned dumb. And his description of the "great style" as "modest" correlates with the "pure speech" (sermonispun) postulate of the "new simplicity" apostrophe. Nonetheless the conclusion about Petronius' conservative literary taste seems misguided. His way of life that we know of from Tacitus' portrayal, the cumulative evidence of the novel's text, as well as the apostrophe itself, however succinct, seem to suggesi: 220

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a different interpretation. It would be strange if the man who rejected so resolutely the conservative ethics of the mos maiorum, subscribed to the traditional esthetics based on it. In fact, the apostrophe manifestly protests against such a view by an emphasis on the innovative and unprecedented character of the simplicity it advocates, thus revealing its author's inordinate ambition. As a genre, menippea exhibits a particular propensity for renewals and reappraisals, at times unpredictably dramatic. 110 By repudiating the moralism of the Catones the Arbiter also implicitly rejects their simplistically pristine stylistic preferences that were characteristic of texts such as, say, the Elder Cato's De Agricultura. Although Petronius makes Encolpius and Eumolpus say that they admire Virgil, this by no means prevented him from parodying the author of the Aeneid in an obscene context. The "new simplicity" he champions does not look back co literary precedents or theories. No ''Atticist criticism" would recommend the exuberant usage of the low slang we find in the Satyricon that appears better fitting Pompeian graffitti artists. 111 The so-called "poetics of Eumolpus" - his discourse on poetry ( 118) and the reasons why it cannot be taken at face value - require and will receive a separate treatment (see pp. 228 ff. below). It suffices to say that Petronius' "inside criticism" of the rhetoricized mentality under Nero derives not from the conservative perspective of an outdated taste, but rather from the viewpoint of a desirable future. This is, in my opinion, a sort of "ultramodernist" (or "post-modernist"?) critique aimed at amending and transcending the excesses of Neronian "kitch," not by a retreat to earlier fashions, but by a thrust towards a new refinement. Against this background, a theory of a "literary quarrel" among Neronian authors as allegedly reflected in the Satyriconseems in many respects attractive. 112 If accepted, it would mean that the feud was actually fought between Petronius (ingratiating himself with Nero) on the one hand, and Seneca and Lucan (now out of Nero's favor) on the the other, and that it found manifestation in the work of each of them, extant or perished. Closer scrutiny, however, reveals that the matter is fraught with more complications than it may appear. None of these authors ever mention the others by name in their extant texts. It is true that from the viewpoint of classical attitudes to literary polemics this was by no means necessary. It is also true that psychology and common sense dictate a high probability of mutual resentment and even antagonism to have existed, at least between Petronius and Seneca. JU From what we know of their character and outlook they seem to represent opposite poles. Seneca must have felt a measure of disgust cowards the "arbiter of elegance" whom he would have considered a decadent nihilist par excellenceindulging Nero in yet further irremediable vices. Petronius, in his turn, can be easily imagined as holding in contempt the philosopher's opportunistic moralism that in the past made him connive with such behavior on the part of his Imperial pupil as adultery (with Acte - Tac. Ann., 13, 13) and matricide. Bue the trouble is that - aside from the concept lying behind the character of Eumolpus, and the controversial matter of the Troiae Halosis - it is difficult to find a passage in the extant 221

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narrative of the Satyricon of which it can be argued with confidence that it offers an intentional attack, in the form of parody or travesty, on Seneca and his writings. 114 Although in the novel there certainly exist a number of discourses resembling the philosopher's work in theme or phraseology, almost all of them refer to "the common pool of ideas," to moral or rhetorical common places and platitudes which abounded in the literature of the time apart from Seneca and must have been reported, or exploited, by Petronius with a variety of purposes, even if some of them may seem to us obscure. 11"> Further, even if we assume the alleged parallelism between the two authors to have been real and deliberate, one still must clearly distinguish between such literary practices as echo, innuendo, allusion, ironic evocation, borrowing, imitation, emulation, parody, and travesty: of them all, only the last two (if proven) would imply any manifest anri-Senecan animus nocendi on Petronius' part. This is not to say that Petronius was unacquainted with Seneca's essays and epistles; of course, he must have read them, and his knowledge of them is occasionally apparent in his text. 11'' But in terms of parody or travesty as aimed at their author, most of the novel's customarily suggested parallels with Seneca must be discarded as innocuous. In fact, only one piece of evidence seems to me worthy of further comment, and that is the famous scene of Trimalchio's drunken fraternization with his slaves: Diffusus hac contentione Trimalchio ''amici" inquit "et servi homines sunt et aeque unum lactem biberunt, etiam si illos ma/us fatus oppressit"- "Trimalchio expanded at this argument and said: 'Friends, slaves are also human beings and drank the same milk as others even though evil fate put chem down'," 71, 1). This remark and subsequent action may be read, for instance, as ironically reflecting upon Seneca's egalitarian and humanitarian concerns found in Letter 47 of the Epistulae Morales.' 17 The view holding that Petronius parodied Seneca in Trimalchio's fraternization scene seems, however, untenable on the grounds of vocabulary and style: the only word found in both sequences, aeque, is required by the topic; and Trimalchio's ungrammatical mutterings (like the masculine fatus) have nothing in common with Seneca's elaborate figures of speech. Nor can it be conclusively proved that the scene in the Cena constitutes a deliberate travesty of Seneca's (or a generally Stoic) position on slavery. Certain effects of both Petronius' strategic irony and the rhetoricized mentality of the time may work against such one-dimensional interpretation. The figure of Trimalchio can itself be construed as a rravestized version of the same elitist social "snobbism" (fastidium) that Seneca indeed strictly disapproved of in the same letter.' 18 Consequently, if one reads the scene in the Satyricon as a deliberate satire of Seneca's passages, the comic effect arises precisely because Trimalchio's behavior is opposite to that of a true "snob" (fastidiosus) who would, according to Seneca, never have fraternized with the slaves.11'J At the same time, Trimalchio's conduce in this, as in other respects, is self-contradictory, and vitiated by caprice. In fact, he defies the philosopher's advice against corporal punishment (Epist., 47, 19), as an inscription fastened to his villa's doorpost testifies: "Whoever of the slaves goes out of the gates without the master's order

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will receive one hundred lashes" (quisquis servussine dominico iussuforas exierit, accipietplagas centum, 28, 7; one of Trimalchio's slaves is even crucified on a sort of maiestascharge, 53; see on this pp. 247 f. below). Neither did the historical Petronius, as it has often been noted, subscribe to the Stoic-like philosophical humanitarianism in regard to slavery.120 On his own deathbed, as Tacitus tells us, he punished some of his slaves, and rewarded others (Ann., 16, 19). And it would be indeed absurd, following the same questionable logic, to conclude that similarities between Trimalchio's and Petronius' own treatment of slaves (a mixture of severity and indulgence) imply the author's desire to satirize himself in portraying one of his characters. The problem of Petronius' intended, or potential, audience will be addressed later; at this point it suffices to indicate that, in terms of preferences and attitudes, it was not necessarily homogeneous. It seems quite probable that the emperor and his immediate coterie felt amused by reading or listening to the obnoxious freedman Trimalchio's pronouncements, as if he was another Seneca, of lofty egalitarian opinions. 121 At the same time, there is no tangible evidence that the top members of the Neronian court were distinguished by particular social snobbery or harsh treatment of their inferiors (a few cases of sexual exploitation, in the spirit of the times, must be excepted), and it is clearly not them, but men of at least one societal level lower whom Seneca had in mind in his particular attack. After all, in the system of Palace administration many important jobs were run by slaves, to say nothing of all-powerful Imperial freedmen secretaries. These circumstances created at the court an atmosphere of social toleration and even occasional benevolence. Paradoxically, it seems that harassment of and discrimination against slaves was advocated by a different breed of people, that is, by certain traditionalist dissidents of the Cassius Longinus stamp, with their nostalgia for "ancestral discipline." 122 Next, Trimalchio's drunken fraternization scene, whatever his other faults regarding chose same slaves, is made moving enough to impress the occasional reader, both ancient and modern, as though designed with the purpose of also redeeming at least a fraction of that personage's monumental idiocies. Seen in this light, the episode adds to the complexity and humanization of Trimalchio's character. His spontaneous egalitarian gesture could be, in principle, approved not only by a present-day liberal, but also, even if after a fit of laughter, by an enlightened Roman senator, of the sort that vociferously protested in the curia against the execution of the entire slave household of Pedanius Secundus. One observes that Trimalchio does actually emancipate his slaves and even bestows upon several of them some property in his written will. 12-' And so did Petronius' own noble friend, Flavius Scaevinus, on the very eve of the fatal Pisonian exposure (Tac. Ann., 15, 54). And a final argument against the simplistic, "Seneca-oriented," reading of this scene is the fact that, neither in his character nor in his status, does Trimalchio resemble Lucilius Junior, Seneca's friend, admirer, and municipal official, to whom the Epistulae Moraleswere addressed. In the context of Lucilius and his 223

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circumstances, the philosopher's line of argument makes perfect sense: familiarity with his slaves would have discredited their master in the eyes of the "snobs" (fastidiost), his social equals, so that he must be advised to summon moral courage and ignore their sneer. In the case of Trimalchio, himself a former slave, the same kind of conduct betraying his consciousness of his origins may be actually construed as meriting him a credit. Therefore if the scene was conceived by the author as a travesty with a particular Senecan text in mind, it largely misfired - which would have been unusual in Petronius whose work gives the impression of a nearly impeccable wit. 124 In sum, I find that too many contingencies do not square to establish that the entire scene of the Cena, starting with Trimalchio's pronouncement on the natural equality of the slaves and the freeborn, was conceived by Petronius as an attack on Seneca and his views, although this is not to deny that it could have been so read, counter-rhetorically and selectively, by the author's contemporaries. It is not Seneca but Trimalchio with whom he was preoccupied when he worked on the scene. And his ultimate purpose in regard to this personage was larger than mere satire: he had to create a figure that would emerge from his narrative larger than life, and he admirably succeeded. Although it is fair to acknowledge that no prose passage in the extant text of the Satyricon provides by itself an irrefutable case of literary attack on Seneca, no conscientious reader would feel entirely free from a lurking suspicion that at some point beneath the surface there must be concealed something of that sort. This sensation is in part due to our inability to penetrate codes and arcana which were transparent to contemporaries, and to employ clues wholly lost ever since. 12"' In part, as I suggested earlier, this is the result of the novel's strategic irony, enhanced by the effects of the period's rhetoricized mentality. Consequently, the maximum that can be claimed in this respect is that certain separate topics, or passages, or allusions, in Petronius' text could be interpreted as anti-Senecan only by the readers so inclined. Against this background, it is surprising to realize the relative strength of the argument to the effect that Seneca's own work offers some distinct hints of the philosopher's animosity towards the novelistY 6 Although it is indeed speculative, I find such a proposition intriguing and psychologically plausible. This view is chiefly rooted in another letter from the EpistuLaeMoraleswhere Seneca, at length and with concentrated venom, descends on the breed of human creatures whom he labels "the crowd of day-shunners" (turba Lucifogarum,Epist., 122, 15) and to whom, as we know from Tacitus' account, the "arbiter of elegance" clearly belonged. And one must not forget that in the conditions of rhetoricized mentality any moralistic generalization or satirical outburst, so far as it pertained to the actual experience of the recipients of the message, could be counter-rhetorically read as reflecting on the immediate reality or even on concrete individuals who fit a description or a theme. Petronius' name, of course, does not surface in this letter: all the examples of the "day-shunners" there cited are taken from the past. Such was standard early 224

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Imperial literary practice, and Seneca in particular at no point commented negatively on any living contemporaries. 127 Even in the De Vita Beata, almost certainly conceived as both defence against, and denunciation of, Suillius Rufus, the latter's name is never mentioned. At the same time it is difficult not to succumb to a suspicion that Petronius was at least one of Seneca's intended targets. In contrast to the earlier letter on the treatment of slaves which provided no tangible innuendoes for identifying him with the "snobs" (fastidiost)of whom he disapproved, this attack on the night owls is focused on the trait of Petronius' personality Tacitus found prominent enough to single out for special mention in his laconic character sketch. Surely the Arbiter was not alone in his nocturnal habits: we know, for instance, of the similar lifestyle led by his own friend, Flavius Scaevinus, the Pisonian conspirator (Tac. Ann., 15, 50), and Seneca's exasperation implies that such conduct was at the time fashionable in certain quarters. But in Petronius the same lifestyle seems to have struck Tacitus as meriting emphasis, and we may guess why: Tacitus must have suspected in it a conceit implied in the rest of the character portrayal, that is, dissimulatio, Petronius' pretending to appear what he really was not. If we adhere to the hypothesis that the Arbiter was implicitly meant by Seneca among the "crowd of day-shunners," it would follow that in the hands of the philosopher the same conceit received the least favorable interpretation - as a senseless pursuit of an artificial and unnatural manner of life, its only purpose being to arrive at further notoriety in a milieu itself pervasively corrupt. If so, Seneca may have missed the mark. Speculating earlier on idiosyncrasies of Petronius' dissimulatio I proposed that it is better comprehended in terms of his need to accommodate his own mold of literary ambition to the political exigencies of his status as a Neronian courtier. Of course, it is easy to imagine that the Arbiter felt resentful at a moralistic sermon of this sort, especially if he could construe it as aiming at himself, from the pen of the disgraced minister whom he long considered a consummate hypocrite. But at the same time, one can hardly escape an uncanny sensation of how closely Seneca's linkage of nocturnal habits with the imagery of morbidity and death reflects, for instance, on the crepuscular scene of Trimalchio's mock funeral (71, 77 f.). 128 It appears, then, that Petronius learned enough of self-irony to extend it even to his own predilections: the preference for night life is evident in both Trimalchio and Habinnas (cf. 72, 1 f.), hardly characters with whom their creator wished to identify. And one must credit Seneca with the ultimate insight that the individuals of Petronius' ilk made a resolute, and even provocative, break with the long-estabHshed tradition of social values and practices. 129 The transgressors were not only the vulgar ignoramuses of no consequence, like the grotesque participants of the Cena, nor were they all depraved victims of absolute power like Nero himself. Some, and Petronius the Arbiter among them, were respectable individuals of Seneca's own societal and intellectual stature. Consequently, the effect of their "nocturnal revolt" upon the philosopher and 225

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others of his persuasion was disturbing since the values and practices thus betrayed were those that served, at least in theory, as the medium and rationale for what was considered proper in the life of both nature and community. Owing to the hypothetical character of, and tenuous evidence for, the theory of the Neronian "literary feud," there does not exist, however, any firm method of differentiating personal animus from practical or theoretical disagreements. uo This makes it imperative briefly to address the controversial matter of the poem on the fall of Troy - the Troiae Halosis (89) - placed by the author of the Satyriconin the mouth of Eumolpus. What must be asked is whether this artifact constitutes a deliberate parody of Seneca's drama. If so, this could further enhance the view of Petronius' concept behind the character of Eumolpus as at least, in part - a travesty of that philosopher, and not merely an impersonal satire against what the novelist must have considered an objectionable species of hypocritical moralizers. Space as well as the purpose of this book do not allow any detailed philological or comparative analysis of the poem. The existent scholarship, although it leans towards the recognition of Seneca as Petronius' subtext, still remains inconclusive. u, It is true that in Seneca's corpus there is no corresponding scene dealing with the Trojan Horse: in fact, Eumolpus offers a condensed (and degraded) version of the famous episode in the Aeneid (2, 13-265). But parody, as earlier defined, and as distinct from travesty, is concerned with manner, not matter. The Troiae Halosis may have been not a parody of a particular Senecan sequence, but of the Senecan poetic medium as such. A crucial point in favor of that seems the choice of form: Eumolpus' piece is constructed as a dramatic monologue of an anonymous Trojan survivor (not Aeneas, however, since he definitely lacks Aeneas' authority and personality) and executed in iambic trimeters very close to those actually used in Seneca's plays. There is also a marked similarity between Eumolpus' imagery or vocabulary and those characteristically Seneca's, as well as between their expressive sensibilities and stylistic devices. In sum, the poem manifests a number of Seneca's established preferences and techniques which Eumolpus is made to appropriate for exploitation. l .E There may be an objection that in the TroiaeHalosiscertain other habitual constituents of Seneca's manner, like excessive erudition or clever sententiae,are downplayed rather than exaggerated, as one would expect from a parody. One is hardly justified in taking Petronius, and even less so Eumolpus, to task for failing to produce an exemplary product of the genre as if he were a consummate modern parodist. His was an age when no articulate theory of parody existed, and parody itself, mixing with travesty, was not differentiated with any clarity from pastiche. 135 At the same time one must take into account the brevity of the piece and Eumolpus' implied and accentuated poetic incompetence. This last point, as I argued earlier, is of major import in any endeavor at a coherent appreciation of the Satyricon. Thereby, whatever did emanate from Eumolpus' pen, could not but have been aimed at the reader's amusement. Here lies the fundamental 226

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difference between any interpreter's legitimate treatment of the novel's moral discourses, irrespective of the personage they are attributed to, and of the Eumolpian poetic effusions. In the former case both polyphonic principle and rhetoricized mentality make plausible the non- or counter-rhetorical reading of chose passages as conscientious critical comments on societal realities. This mode is, however, not possible in the latter case. A bad man is, after all, perfectly able to enunciate good moral philosophy that may work quite apart from his own character or conduct. u 4 In contrast, a bad poet is unable, by definition, to produce poetry of any worth. To believe that Pecronius could have thought otherwise is entirely to misconceive his personality as it emerges from our sources: that of a refined intellectual with the strong priorities of esthetic criteria over everything else. What must have mattered, so far as Seneca was concerned, is not a (possible) mild parody of his tragic style, but the fact that the piece on the theme of his own plays was ascribed to Eumolpus, thus sealing the satiric parallel between the two. This makes comprehensible the venom of Seneca's retaliation if the passage on the "crowd of day-shunners" was indeed primarily directed against Petronius. The philosopher would have felt deeply insulted by the recognition of himself travestied in the character of the old hypocrite, lecher, and graphomaniac, a connection transparent to perhaps most contemporary readers. At the same time, owing to the popularity of its subject matter in the literature of the time, the Troiae Halosis could have been intended and/or counter-rhetorically (that is, out of context) perceived as a travesty (or even parody, although this remains unverifiable) of any other text beside Seneca's: such as the Aeneid, Lucan's lost Jliacon,and, last but not least, of the epic on the fall of Troy penned by Nero. Nero's Troica,referred to by Sueronius as Halosis !Iii (Nero, 38) seems to have been the most famous of his works and closest to his heart: when a young boy, he distinguished himself pleading in Greek the cause of the people of Roman Troy before Claudius (Suet. Nero, 7; Tac. Ann., 12, 58), and his infatuation with the story must have been well publicized to produce the widespread rumor of his celebrating it in song at the very peak of the Great Fire (Tac. Ann., 15, 39; Dio, 62, 18; Suet. Nero, 38). It is true that Nero wrote in epic hexameters, but Petronius' change of meter may well have belonged to the tactics of "plausible deniabiliry."U 5 Under the conditions of rhetoricized mentality readers of different political orientation read the same texts differently, above all in a context as ambiguous as chat of the Satyricon. It is hard, however, to imagine a reader of the rime who would not have recalled, in one way or another, the Imperial Troicain connection with the TroiaeHalosis.Two divergent readings were conceivable: one, dissident - or censorious - could have attributed to the author an animus nocendiwhich strived to satirize the Imperial poem by its very contents through a figure of a disreputable poetaster. To this it could be objected chat the piece produced purported to travesty not Nero, but Nero's epigones and imitatators, and show what happens when a topic worthy of an emperor's pen is taken over

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by an unworthy fraud. One assumes that Petronius expected this kind of reading to have been Nero's own, given the latter's habitual vainglory, although a question to what extent he was aware of the risks involved in the potential interpretatioprava must remain unanswered. One encounters even greater diffculty when one attempts to analyze the relationship between Eumolpus' poetic "improvisation" (impetus, 118, 6) on the Civil War fought by Caesar and Pompey with Lucan's great epic devoted to the same theme. Apart from an ingenious, although in my view untenable, theory considering Petronius' product prior to Lucan's and, furthermore, the source of the latter's inspiration, there chiefly exist, with some odd variants and nuances, three discernible schools of thought. 1jG One regards Eumolpus' miniepic as a deliberate parody-cum-criticism of Lucan; another believes that it was intended as a serious exemplary piece of both moral and artistic significance, and purported to teach Lucan or his admirers the correct way of writing poetry on such a subject; and the last claims no interaction whatsoever between the two texts and explains their numerous parallels by reference to a common source. 1·F None of these arguments, however, covers all the available material or explains all its intricacies or accounts for the working of rheroricized mentality. Each ignores a series of objections by opponents and, at times, runs against common sense. Each is largely invalidated when confronted in an impartial manner with the other two, and this fact suggests chat the problem is far more complex than is usually believed. But before this issue is taken anew, it is imperative to address Eumolpus' "programmatic" discourse on poetry advocating the ideas chat his mini-epic ostensibly purports to illustrate, and causing no less controversy and embarrassment to critics: "Multos," inquit Eumolpus, "o iuvenes, carmen decepit. Nam ut quisque versum pedibus instruxit sensumque teneriore verborum ambitu intexuit, putavit se continuo in Heliconem venisse. Sic forensibus ministeriis exercitati frequenter ad carminis tranquillitatem tamquam ad portum feliciorem refugerunt, credentes facilius poema extrui posse quam controversiam sententiolis vibrantibus pictam. Ceterum neque generosior spiritus vanitatem amat, neque concipere aut edere partum mens potest nisi ingenti flumine litterarum inundata. Refugiendum est ab omni verborum, ut ita dicam, vilitate et sumendae voces a plebe semocae, ut fiat 'odi profanum vulgus et arceo.' Praeterea curandum est ne sencenciae emineant extra corpus oracionis expressae, sed intexto vestibus colore niteant. Homerus testis et lyrici Romanusque Vergilius et Horatii curiosa felicitas. Ceteri enim aut non viderunt viam qua iretur ad carmen, aut visam timuerunt calcare. Ecce belli civilis ingens opus quisquis attigeric nisi plenus litteris, sub onere labetur. Non enim res gestae versibus comprehendae sum, quod longe melius historici faciunt, sed per ambages deorumque ministeria et fabulosum sententiarum [tormentum] praecipitandus est liber spiricus, ut

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pocius furentis animi vaticinatio appareat quam religiosae orationis sub testibus fides." (118, l ff.) "Poetry, my young friends," said Eumolpus, "has deceived a lot of people. As soon as one has made verses scan and woven some delicate meaning with a circuit of words, he believes he has forthwith ascended Helicon. Thus some who are exhausted by forensic activities often seek the calm of poetry as if it provides a happier harbor, chinking that a poem is easier to compose than a legal speech [controversy] adorned with vibrant epigrams. But the nobler spirit loves soundness and a mind can neither conceive nor bear its fruit without steeping in the immense flood of literature. One must shun all diction which is, so to speak, cheap but use language divorced from the plebeian speech, so as to fulfill the maxim: 'I hate the vulgar mob and fend it off.' Furthermore, one should take care not to allow inventive sentences to stand out from the body of actual speech: let them shine with a color which is woven into the texture. Homer attests to this, and the lyric poets, and Roman Virgil, Horace's careful felicity. The others either did not see the road by which one arrives at poetry, or saw it and feared to set foot on it. Therefore, a person who attempts the immense subject of the Civil War will slip under its weight unless he is full of literature. It need not comprise in verse the events that really happened, which historians do far better, but the poet's free spirit needs to rush headlong through oblique allusions and divine ministrations and the twists of fabulous pronouncements, so that it may appear the oracular utterance of a rapt spirit rather than an oath to speak the truth taken before witnesses." There are two major issues involved in the interpretation of this passage: whether it reflects Petronius' genuine beliefs and whether it implies any bearing on Lucan and his work. 1-' 8 Granted, Eumolpus is conceived as a paradigm of a poor poet. This, however, does not make him eo ipso incapable of sound literary judgment. His present excursus clearly offers certain coherent esthetics rooted in both Platonic and Aristotelian tradition: the former considering the poet a divinely inspired figure, the latter making a clear distinction between history and poetry writing in terms of purpose and technique. The novel's polyphonic principle allows one to read this discourse non-rhetorically, chat is, literally, as a pronouncement favoring the poetic practices of Greek and Roman classics and their epigones, their imitation rather than emulation. The unstated premise is that contemporary poetry is decidedly inferior to its predecessors, much in accord with Eumolpus' earlier remarks in the gallery on the decline of the arts, and that nothing better can be done than following in their steps. However, as suggested earlier, it is by no means evident that Petronius himself seriously entertained such straightforwardly conservative views. In fact, it seems rather unlikely, although owing

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to the effects of the novel's strategic irony, this is not made immediately manifest. All the lip-service its characters pay to such views notwithstanding, the narrative betrays its author's clandestinely equivocal, even irreverant, attitude to the classical heritage. It is true that he draws heavily on it (especially on Horace), and that his text abounds in classical echoes and allusions. Ac the same time, it cannot be denied that the entire plot is, in a large measure, a travesty of the Odysseywith Priapus playing the role of Poseidon; that the Cena ironically evokes both Plato's Symposiumand the epic tradition of the "descent to the Underworld," while Ovid and, in particular, Virgil are parodied in an exceedingly obscene context. 1J9 It must also be noted that the thrust of Eumolpus' argument, with its emphasis on artificiality, learning, and the fantastic, runs contrary to the principles of Petronius' apostrophe on the "new simplicity" enunciated in his own voice. The apostrophe advocates "candid tongue" ( candidalingua, 132, I 5) and attention to the realities of life (quodquefacit populus - "what people do," ibid.); Eumolpus enjoins against using the vernacular and commends resorting to mythology and fahle. This reasoning, however, can be criticized as irrelevant on grounds of the generic differences drawn by classical literary doctrine. The novelist must have heen aware, the objection would run, that the attributes of his low satire would by no means suit the high art of epic. True enough: but if he really was committed to generic regimentation, Petronius would not have given such a peculiar form to his major artistic effort in the first place. By the very choice of menippea as the medium and the vehicle of his vision, he already betrayed a taste for the unorthodox and unconventional, a creative temperament uncomfortable with artificial barriers or canons, in other words, faculties of mind little compatible with the pathos of "the Eumolpian aesthetics." 140 It must be acknowledged that impartial scrutiny of the text of the discourse does not yield, apart from the actual theme of the Civil War chosen by Eumolpus for a poem illustrating his views, any tangible hints at, or allusions to, Lucan personally. It is often claimed that the latter is meant in the disdainful reference to the fashion of those who forsake forensic activities in favor of poetry believing it to be "the happier harbor" (portumfeliciorem, 118, 2) and the easier profession. l-i I But this could hardly have been the case, although it seems striking that several decades later this point will be echoed in the argument of Marernus, the protagonist of Tacicus' Dialogus,who gives it an implicitly political explanation (11 ff.). But a surmise that Eumolpus is made here to deliver a personal jab at Lucan is largely invalidated by the known facts of the latter's life. In contrast to those censured in the discourse, Lucan, first, entertained inordinate poetic ambitions, and was recognized as a promising talent all along from his early adolescence; and, second, he did not voluntarily quit forensic oratory for poetry, bur was prohibited from pleading in the courts by Nero. And Petronius is too skillful a satirist to allow a waste of his irony on allusions that would not work.

230

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At the same time, Lucan's treatment of the Civil War must have served the readers of the period as a frame of reference in which the poem of Eumolpus was to be understood: a modern view altogether denying the link seems to me untenable. 1 1~ Although it is true char Lucan was not alone in his choice of that subject, his epic must have caused, owing to rhe political scandal surrounding it, so much excitement and anxiety that a contemporary was bound to recall ir at rhe first mention of Eumolpus' product. Besides, among all numerous parallels with and echoes of Lucan in Petronius some are not explicable by a mere supposition of a common source. In the final analysis, it seems equally erroneous to accept Eumolpus' mini-epic fix an exemplary endeavor, moral or artistic, in accord with his own professed views. Even if both arc taken non-rhetorically at face value, the poem and the discourse represent a set of imerrcxtual implausibilities. In fact, one cannot treat them as an entity and at rhe same time retain the parody-cum-criticism approach. If the discoursl' is vil'wed as a critique of incorrect literary practices of the time. the poem must haw been designed as a model of the correct way, and this is what Eumolpus actually means. If, however, the poem is seen as a parody of vices and Aaws of contemporary authors (Lucan included), this is surely an inadvertent effect, defying Eumolpus' own articulate intention. In that case it satirically reAecrs upon him rather rhan upon his alleged targets since he as a poet proves incapable to achieve his stared goals. and such a failure necessarily undermines the weight of hi~ earlier criticisms made in the discourse. Furthermore. in contrast ro, say, a wholesak condemnation of the Ncronian literary scene in Persius' firq satire, the discourse of Eumolpus shows much ambivalence and confusion about the matter since he as much enhances the fashionable trends as he atr-1eks them. Thus, for instance, Eumolpus' acclaim of learning in poetry is in full agreement with the Alexandrian tastes of his contemporaries, among them Lucan and Nero himself (cf. doctus Nero, "the learned Nero," in Marr., 8, 70, 8). Equally. he supports rhetoricization of poetry through the employment ot sentcntiae - exactly a practice Lucan was renowned for -· disapproving only of the incongruities this may occasionally lead to. 1 d Even though Eumolpus denounces "historicism" in epic writing and advocates instead the use of divine machinery (as if directly aiming at Lucan), it is well co recall that Lucan's peculiarity in the treatment of the gods was an innovative trait, an exception, not the rule. Most of Lucan's colleagues would have been perfectly in agreement with this Eumolpian advice, as follows from the epics wrirrcn at a slightly later dare which arc replete with derailed portrayals of divine machinations. 111 Many of Eumolpus' remarks are thus either irrelevant to Lucan's work, or they acrually play in favor of th1.:prominent features characteristic of Lucan's poetics even if he shared some wirh rhc rest of the Neronian aurhors. In this context, rhe injunction against "historicity" stands alone, making it an insufficient warrant for the widespread view that criticism of Lucan as a poet was the chief intent of rhe entire discourse. Moreover, Eunwlpus' theories are largely defied ~

251

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hy his o,n1 pracriu:: despite his critical warnings J.gainst it, his mini-epic is nor lacking in awkward smtentitlt', while his gods, most of them personified ahstract conccpb, even though they on occasion deliver lengthy harangues, do nor really interfere with the course of action as they should according to his discourse.;'' All of rhi.sbctrays yet further tension between the two set picces - a discourse and a poem --· and it backfires on their putative author Eumolpus who is thus douhly satirized both as practitioner and theoretician. Apart from the operations of Pt·twnius' strategic irony, that is, his assignment of the poem's authorship to the tl priori graphomaniac Eumolpus, the deliberately low quality of his verse is evident on intrinsic textual grounds. The entire effusion is pompous and vacuous, rrplcte with cliches and platitudes, in style as wdl as in content. Ir lacks Lucrn's pairrnaking complexity, vcrhal virtuosity, and somher existential commitment. AnJ it is not hard to imagine how certain figures in Eumolpus· narrative and imagery could strike a contemporary audience as \vholly ridiculous, for instance rhat of Pluto trying co grasp Fortune's hand and in the process breaking the earth asunder. There are a number of pieces anJ fragments in the Stt~)'rinm, aparr from the epigrams attributed to him, to testify that Perronius the poet was surely able to perform far hl'tter. Lastly, the third theory, holding that the author intentionally made Eumolpus parody Lucan, is no more cogent. In fact, that proposition is so baffling rhat it seems difficult to account frn its pnpularit)'- Lucan as a poet was highly idiosyncraric: his vvork offers ample opportunities for exploitation even to a lessrhan-skillful parodist. None of rharcae/Me reticente dabunt; tibi certior omnia vates/ lpse canet Siculis genitor Pompeius in arvis,I !lie quoque incertus, quo te vocet, unde repellat,/ Quas iubeat vitare plagas, quae sidera mundz). This seems to assume the poet's planning some kind of scene (along the lines of genitor-prophet, like Virgil's pater Anchises) taking place, necessarily at the time of the Sicilian Wars, that is, after Caesar's murder. The difficulty is ingeniously, although still not conclusively, explained away by Grenade (1950), 52 ff, with a hypothesis that the appearance of Pompey's ghost to his son was a locus communis derived from Cornelius Severus' poem Bel/um Siculum so that, in the case of Lucan, it could have sufficed co hint at a similar episode without necessarily implying that it recurs later in the poem; cf. Ahl (1976), 147. Note, on the other hand, the way Virgil handles the events beyond the scope of his epic - especially the death of Aeneas (I owe this observation to Gordon Williams). Haffter's (1957) belief that the text of the Bellum Civile, as we have it, is complete enjoyed until recently little support among scholars. le was resurrected and amplified by Masters (1992}, 216 ff. Notwithstanding all his show of confidence, Masters' specious procedure is untenable: it builds a series of suppositions based on each other, none of them fully demonstrable, and ofren overlooking an alternative answer. (Thus, for instance, much is made from the

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2, PP. 183-84

argument ex silentio: none of our authorities seems to state explicicly that Lucan's epic is incomplete, but it is never asked whether they could not have simply considered this obvious with no need co mention it at all.) Masters' formulations (e.g. "For the poem whose premise is the impossibility of its resolution, the only possible ending is one which cuts us off at the moment where nothing is resolved," 253) reflect our own post-modern sensibilities and would have baffled Lucan or his contemporary reader. In fine, despite Masters' protests, an impartial reading makes one agree with Bruere (1950), 217, char the incomplete condition of Lucan's poem breaking off where it does "is too evident co require proof." I share che majority view on the chronology of the Bellum Civile- cf. Rose (1966a), 384; Ahl (1976), 42 and footnote. The books must have been written in the order of the events they describe; the ban was issued after the first three books were completed (Vacca, 42). 199 On this cf. e.g. Marci (1975), 77, 88; Ahl (1976), 352 f.; Quint (1993), 388. Lounsbury ( 1976) argues that Book 7 was revised by the poet upon its completion and turned into a manifesto for the Pisonian conspiracy. 200 In a separate essay on Book 7 of the Bellum Civile ( 1994), Masters made a somewhat preposterous attempt to derive Lucan 's policies from his esthetics in terms of the "anxiety of influence," e.g.: "Rather than making Lucan's political beliefs logically prior co his poetic credo, we might go so far as co suppose that it was Lucan 's inevitable clash with Virgil ... that led him to proclaim so noisily a political ideal chat was so outrageously anti-Virgilian; that Lucan's poetics are prior to his politics" (156). As in his earlier work ( 1992), Masters' procedures in this new effort are irreverent and often irrelevant as well as fraught with logical contradictions. Contrary tO the fashionable denial of authorial intent, he postulates that Lucan was engaged in a deliberate deception of his reader. Although he aliows that the Be/Lum C'ivile can "be misunderstood as propaganda or, more accurately ... some readers may decide it is propaganda" (171; original emphasis), the "telos" of his argument is that "Lucan's poem is a reductio ad absurdum of politically committed writing" (168). To refute in any detail this militant anti-historicist thesis which ignores or distorts salient features of Neronian political culture would require an inappropriately lengthy argumencation and here be out of place. To my mind, Masters' main trouble lies in his apparently equal fondness for both Lucan and Nero so that he would have wished chem to spare, or even reinforce, each other, cf. e.g.: "If Lucan had survived, it [the Bellum Civile] would be a testimony to Nero's liberality; since Lucan was, for whatever reason, persecuted, it is now a scathing indiccmenc of his tyranny" ( 172). 201 For the foror of Lucan's Caesar note esp. Glaesser (1984), 53 ff.; also Baumer (1982), 173 ff. Masters' (1992) entire argument depends on the assumption that Lucan in the Bellum Civile at the same time was (or was not, which characteristically seems to make no difference) both pro-Caesarian and pro-Pompeian (or proCatonian) - cf. e.g. 7 ff.; 43 ff., 82, and passim. This is decidedly not the view espoused by the poet's Roman readers, such as Statius and, presumably, Lucan 's own widow whom he addressed, cf. Silv., 2, 7, 65 ff., I 07 ff. On Lucan's intellectual and emotional power, see Williams (1978), 247 ff.; 291 f.; Hutchinson ( 1992), e.g. 251 ff.; cf. on his unity of mood, Johnson ( 1987), 122. As regards Lucan's pessimism, cf. Narducci (1979), 8, 30, 71, and, provocatively, Johnson (1987), 15 ff., 45 f. In my judgment, Quint (1993), 147 ff, tends to exaggerate what he regards as the potentially optimistic dimension of Lucan's outlook, rooted in the poem's "insistence upon historical open-endedness at a time when the hated Imperial regime had long been confirmed in power" (l 5 I). Bue taken against the background of the epic's universe ruled by evil, such a claim appears at best wishful chinking, and of little consequence or consolation. This is not to deny, however, rhac several passages discussed by Quint (e.g. 1,669 ff.; 7, 207 ff.; 7, 695 ff. could

324

NOTES TO PP. 184-86 have inspired a dissident reader counter-rhetorically with hope-against-hope, in particular if they were recognized selectively or in isolation. This effect must have depended on the changing context of the poet's work and life, of which we know so little, as well as on the vicissitudes of his readers, such as an involvement with, or merely awareness of, the Pisonian activities. 202 One celling aspect of Lucan's affinity with his wicked protagonist pertains to the social snobbery shared by them both, cf. e.g. Caesar's claim in his oration to the army that procerum motus haec cuncta secuntur: I Humanum paucis vivit genus (5, 342 f.) and the poet's own comment that the punishment of the great evil-doer is a prerogative of his peers and must not be allowed to come from the "menial hand:" Poenaque civilis belli, vindicta senatus,/ Paene data est fomulo (10, 339 f.). Note a similar attitude manifest in the context of the alleged destruction of all the patrician class at Pharsalus, 7, 597 f.: iacet aggere magnol Patricium campis non mixta plebe cadaver, and further in 760 ff.: Capit inpia plebesl Caespite patricio somnos, stratumque cubilel Regibus infandus miles premit. In contrast, see Tacirus' (Ann., 15, 57) grudging admiration of the freedwoman Epicharis; see Rudich (1993), 105. For Lucan's view on the role of the crowds, see further Johnson (1987), 112 ff. Suetonius emphasizes the expiatory purpose of Lucan 's alleged denunciation of his mother Acilia (matrem quoque innoxiam inter socios nominavit

sperans impietatem sibi apud parricidam principem profaturam - Luc., 26 ff.). Tacitus, however, reports (Ann., 15, 71) chat she was left intact - neither condemned nor acquitted. Gerty (1940), xviii ff., finds this wholly questionable and attributes ic co rumors manufactured by Nero afrer the poet's death. Even if this was so, the readiness on the part of the public (as reAected in our sources) to believe the slander still seems suggestive. 203 One must distinguish, both psychologically and esthetically, between my inference about the poet's "self-exorcism," char is to say, an ambivalent release of dark impulses within socially acceptable discourse, and Masters' (1992), e.g. 7 ff. and passim, view of Lucan embarking upon a magically explicit celebration of nefas. This latter hardly existed in the European tradition as a literary conceit until the end of the eighteenth century, with the arrival of the Marquis de Sade. 204 Neither Lucan's eulogy to Nero nor the implications of his "Pompeianism" may be taken for any positive, even if inarticulate, political program. For the role of eulogy as the means of self-protection, see above, section 3; as for "Pompeianism," in itself it makes little political sense unless one relates it to the close exigencies of the Pisonian conspiracy (above, section 8). 205 Cf. Suet. Luc., 25 ff.: facile enim confessus et ad humillimas devolutus preces . ..

imperato autem mortis arbitrio libero ad patrem corrigendis quibusdam versibus suis exaravit epulatusque largiter bracchia ad secandas venaspraebuit medico. Furneaux, 2 (I 896), ad loc., offers a conjecture that the lines reportedly recited by the dying Lucan might have been 3, 635 ff.: Ferrea dum puppi rapidos manus inserit uncos/ Adfixit Lycidan. Mersus foret i!!e profando,I Sed prohibent socii suspensaque crura retentant.l Scinditur avolsus, nee, sicut volnere, sanguisl Emicuit lentus: ruptis cadit undique venis,I Discursusque animae diversa in membra meantisl !nterceptus aquis. Nullius vita peremptil Est tanta dimissa via. Pars ultima truncil Tradidit in letum vacuos vitalibus artus;/ At tumidus qua pu!mo iacet, qua viscerafervent,! Haeserunt ibi fota diu, luctataque mu/tum/ Hae cum parte viri vix omnia membra tulerunt.

3 PETRONIUS: THE IMMORAL IMMORALIST I use the term "novel" as applied to Petronius' collection of fragments for the sake of convenience; see on the issue of genre below, section 3. For an amusing catalogue

325

NOTES

2 3

4

5

TO CHAPTER

.3. P. 186

of follies written on the subject of the Satyricon see Rose (I 9666). Sullivan (1968) followed by Walsh ( 1970) rends to denigrate Petronius' achievement by treating it as almost exclusively a piece of entertainment (both authors provide, however, useful information and insights into various literary aspects of the novel). The opposite approach, seeking to establish the Arbiter as a moralist, is argued by Higher ( 1941) and modified by Arrowsmith (l 966). For the recent decades, one must note a series of important publications by Italian scholars, such as Fedeli (I 981) and (1989), which transcend this simplistic dichotomy and attempt to inquire into deeper complexities of Petronius' artistic vision. Of the remaining book-length treatments in English, I find Ran kin's collection of essays ( 1971) particularly helpful; Rose's posthumous monograph (1971) is indispensable in regard to the authorship and chronology of the novel; Slater's (1990) is an welcome discussion of the Satyricon largely in terms of reader-response criticism. A special issue of Arion (vol. 5, 1966), entirely devoted to Petronius, offers a series of inspired papers which is still valuable. Similarly, one must single our two important articles by Zeitlin, (1971a) and (l 971 b). See also materials in ANRW, 2, 32, 3 (1985) - especially Soverini (I 985) and Smith (1985) which provide a bibliography for the years 1945-1982 that updates the excellent Schmeling and Stuckey (1977). It is curious to observe that today's Anglo-Saxon view of Petronius treats him for the most part, following Walsh and Sullivan, as primarily an artist-entertainer, while continental scholarship continues to regard him as a seriously engaged writer of moral, and even philosophical, import. There exist excellent English versions of the Satyriconby J.P. Sullivan ( 1965) and, especially, by William Arrowsmith ( 1959), but none of them is literal enough for the purpose of this investigation. Unless otherwise stated, the translations from Petronius are mine even though I had occasionally to draw on those mentioned above, and I owe thanks to Brian Fuchs for his general help in this matter. E.g. "Petronius was the slimiest horror that ever lived" - in a footnote to Rose (19666), 301. Not surprisingly, Fellini has chosen this work as an inspiration for the famous film; see also Rankin's (1971 ), 68 ff analysis of Petronius in comparison with Proust, Joyce, and Fitzgerald; cf Schlant ( 199 I), and Gagliardi (1993), 167 ff. On the size of the original text see e.g. Sullivan (1968), 34 ff.; Slater (1990), 12 and note. In what follows I have perforce recognized the order of the fragments as it is preserved in the manuscripts, although it seems by no means impossible that some individual passages, particularly in verse, may have been originally located elsewhere. Cf., on the other hand, Hubbard's (1986) imaginative argument regarding the intricacies of the Satyricon's architectonics; also Barchiesi (1981 ), 109 ff. Textological problems in Petronius are notorious. I follow the conservative text of Buecheler's editio maior ( 1862), still considered the standard one (cf. Pellegrino [ 1986], 7: "la cui edizione resta un modello indiscusso di solidita e acume filologico "), and sometimes that of M tiller and Ehlers (I 983). The most extensive commentary remains Paratore, 2 (1933). For attempts to reconstruct the plot of the Satyriconnote esp. Paratore, l (1933), 109 ff.; Ciaffi (1955); Van Thiel (1971); and, more recently, Daviault ( 1983), the last suggesting that the narrative might have started in Massalia and was to end in Lampsacus, the center of the cult of Priapus, with the region of Puteoli (where the Cena takes place) as its geographic and itinerary center, and that it remained unfinished owing to the author's arrest and suicide. This is an often insurmountable problem inherent to any first-person narrative in a picaresque novel aiming at anything larger than sheer entertainment: the logic of the discourse demands that even negative heroes must occasionally express authorial opinions, such as social criticism - witness, for instance, Thackeray's Barry Lyndon. Only a very sophisticated strategy of consistent ironic self-distancing, as in Thomas

326

NOTES

6

7

8

9

10

11

TO CHAPTER

3, PP. 186-89

Mann's Felix Krull, may allow the author to avoid a trap. Pedictably, in the film versions of these novels where the problem of the first-person narrative becomes irrelevant, the conception of rhe chief character is perforce simplified: thus, both in Fellini's Satyricon and Stanley Kubrik's Barry Lyndon the protagonists emerge as distictly nobler individuals than in the literary originals. Note the classic discussion of the "unreliable narrator" in Booth (1961), 149 ff., 271 ff. Rankin ( 1971 ), 37, comes closest, albeit only in a brief statement, to the recognition of the need for dissimulatio: "The pressures upon the individual to dissimulate his thoughts, and to present a conformist front, became more and more intense under the Principate, though conformity did not always safeguard its practitioners from the fury of rhe principes and the greed of delatores." I briefy discussed the dissident aspects of Petronius' biography in my earlier volume - Rudich (1993), 153 ff., 299 f. Marmorale (1948) was the most forceful exponent of the view which ascribes the writing of the Satyricon to the post-Neronian period and by now is, with very few exceptions, such as Martin (1975), rejected by the communis opinio; on this matter, note especially a heated debate between Marmorale (1949), (1950), and Paratore (1948), (1950). The definitive argument identifying the Arbiter and the author of the Satyricon with T. Petronius Niger, cons. suff. AD 62 or 63, belongs to Rose (1971). See also rhe review of the controversy in Rose ( 19666). E.g. pretense: speciem simplicitatis; vitiorum imitatione:, cf. Rankin 's (1971), 91, comment on Tacitus' "methodologically formulaic but verbally varied expression of scepticism about people not being what they seem" paradox: utque alios industria, ita hunc ignavia ad fomam protulerat, cf. also quanto solutiora ... tanto gratius; conflicting viewpoints: e.g. habebaturque non ganeo et pro_fiigator. .. sed etc.; cf. ita hunc ignavia ad famam protulerat and proconsul tamen ... et mox consul vigentem se ac parem negotiis ostendit; erudito luxu and in speciem simplicitatis; oxymoron: cf. erudito luxu. On the portrayal of Petronius by Tacitus, cf. further Bogner (1941 ); Schnur (I 955). As regards Tacitus' interest in morally paradoxical characters, see Syme ( 1958), 548. For Tacitus' source on Petronius, see Rose's (19666), 294, plausible conjecture that it may have been Cluvius Rufus; also, possibly (even if second hand), the Younger Pliny who, like Petronius, served at one point as governor of Bithynia; Rankin 's (1971 ), 94 ff., suggestion that Tacims' source could have been C. Fannius, one of the auchors of the exitus illustrorum virorum literature, must be ruled out: close to the circle of Thrasea Paetus, this aurhor would have hardly produced a surreptitiously admiring portrayal of the man who openly mocked (even in the manner of his death!) the entire system of Stoic values. On the pauci et validi, see above, the Introduction; cf. Rudich (1993), xxv ff. and index. Of the earlier generation one may mention L. Vitelli us or Valerius Asiacicus as belonging to the same psychological type. Rose (1966b), 289 f.; on the collaborationist traditions of the Petron ii, see Nichols (1978), 15, 21; cf. also Rudich (1993), 299. The prominent Pecronii numbered P. Petronius, cons. suff. AD 19, the legate of Syria (AD 39-42) who figures in the Apocolocyntosis (I 4) as Claudius' vetus convictor, and the N eronian statesman Petronius Turpilianus who may have helped the Arbiter's career. For the Arbiter's possible connection with Massalia (where he may, like his younger contemporary Agricola, have received his education), see Cichorius (1961), 438 ff.; Sullivan (1968), 40 f. On the career of T. Petronius Niger see Rose (1971), 55 ff. and (19666), 289 (with footnotes); Titus for the Arbiter's praenomen, as found in the account of two so different authors as Plutarch and Pliny the Elder, must be preferred co Gaius of T acims' manuscripts which was, most likely, a mistake of the original copyist. The

327

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12 13

14

15 16 l7

18

19

TO CHAPTER

3, PP. 189-91

title Arbiter, cannot, of course, be an official cognomen (ibid., 44 f.) - the manuscript inscriptions must be of later origin and, owing to the absence of the article in Latin, simply means "Petronius the Arbiter." As regards Tacitus' own grudging admiration for Petronius, cf. Rose (1971), 56, and, in particular, Rankin's (1971), 88 ff, well-constructed argument (though I must caution against the latter's identification of the professedly Stoic writer Fannius, who would hardly have included the Arbiter in his marryrologue, as Tacitus' source. E.g. erudito fuxu; speciem simplicitatis; vitiorum imitatione. Nore some astute remarks on concealment and pretense in Petronius · life and work by Rankin (1971), 32 ff; and a comment (91 f.) that Tacitus' formula- revolutus ad vitia, seu vitiorum imitatione- is "a neat ironic reversal of his favorite theme of apparent virtues concealing substantial vices." Cf. Sullivan's remarks on Petronius as voyeur, ( 1968), 238 ff. The desire to dominate the Neronian court is ascribed to him in Rose {1971 ), 56 f. Cf. Zeitlin (1971a), 80 f.: "Petronius chose this subterfuge [the ambiguous form of menippea] to avoid running the risk of exciting Nero's inevitable envy of a literary rival;" see also Perry (1967), 204 f. That the Arbiter was Nero's genuine friend is argued, e.g., by Rose (19666), 290 f.: "It will not do to continue the popular notion (as in Sienkiewicz' Quo vadis.~ that Petronius died a scornful and defiant martyr ro Nero's tyranny" ere.; cf. also Sullivan ( 1968), 257 f.; cf., to the contrary, Rankin ( 1971), 85. Translation as quoted is from the testimonia section in the issue of Arion dedicated to Petronius (5, 1966, 274). For the risky behavior of some N eronian courtiers, such as Fabricius Veienro and Vestinus Atticus, see Rudich (I 993). 58 ff., 119 ff. On the reliability of Plutarch 's and Pliny's anecdotes (arguably, derived from Cluvius Rufus) see Rose (19666), 278, but the contention (ibid., 291) that the catalogue of Nero's sexual depravities was sent to him by Petronius at his deathbed not as a sign of hostility and mockery, bur was "a gesture in character wirh the 'plain speaking' which Plutarch thought of as a form of Petronius' flattery" seems to me implausible. It betrays a misconception both of Plutarch's meaning and of the relations between the two and arises from the untenable premise that "our interpretation must start from the premise that Petronius was a good friend of Nero" (ibid.). In his posthumous monograph (1971) Rose substantially abated his insistence on Perronius' genuine friendship to Nero, recognizing, e.g., that Plutarch's passage actually implies a subtle insult disguised as flattery (47). Cf. Slater (1990), 31. Walsh's (1970), 83 ff., followed by Relihan (1993), 95 f., belief that Petronius' primary purpose was to satirize contemporary "scholarship" (sc. ''academic criticism") seems misguided: none of his major characters is truly meant to represent "a scholar," but they (including Agamemnon) exhibit various degrees of thinly veiled imposture. The relationship of appearance and reality in the novel is often discussed, e.g. by Leeman (1967), 147 ff.; Zeitlin (1971 b), 657 ff.; Callebar ( 1974), 290 ff.; Thomas ( 1986), 51 ff, but for the most parr - except Rankin (1971), 32 ff. - with little relevance to the novel's political dimension; nore Pinna's (1987-88) treatment of truth/deception regarding the Satyricon in terms of anthropology. Cf. 126, 1 l: quod ancilla haberet matronae superbiam et matrona ancil!ae humilitatem. On role playing in the Satyricon, literary and social and sexual, see Slater (1990), passim, esp. 29 ff., 43 ff., 91 ff., 123 ff.; for Circe and Chrysis, note Cicu (1992), 123 ff. Note Zeidin's (1971 a), 63, observation that even the werewolf story (62) concerns pretence - it "deals with the disguise of beast as man." In similar fashion, one may also regard the Widow of Milerus story told by Eumolpus in later chapters (l 11 f.) where one corpse is substituted for another. Cf. Rankin (1971 ),

328

NOTES

TO CHAPTER

3, PP. I 91-92

41: 'The Cena Trimalchionis is a masterpiece of social pretence and bluff," and his subsequent derailed discussion of the episode. 20 Cf. 125, 4: quam male est extra legem viventibus: quicquid meruerunt, semper

exspectant. 2 I Like, e.g. a striking verbal coincidence of Tacitus' speciessimplicitatis in Petronius' manner of conduct and the famous apostrophe in the Satyricon on the literary nova simplicitas of that book; on the meanings of simplicitas, cf. pp. 196, 219 f. below. In this connection ir can be mentioned rhat dissimulatio might have served, in psychological terms, as a reason for Perronius' choice of a narrator ''other than himself" in the person of Encolpius; see, however, on this entire problem below, pp. 194 ff. 22 E.g. Rose (1971), 4 I ff.; cf., however, Perry (1967), 205: "Petronius wrote farce because he did not dare write anything else ... The framework ... had to be ... a strong shield against the suspicion that he was engaged in anything other than tomfoolery." 23 Cf Crum's (I 952) zealous search for the novel's possible hints of Nero and his predecessors. This procedure must be well qualified and exceedingly cautious in order to avoid leaps of fantasy which vitiate Ratti's ( I 978) discussion who wants to see in the Satyricon its author's "coded" anri-Neronian pamphlet or "testament." See Rose (1971), Appendix I for a full list of the alleged allusions to Nero in the extant text. Cf. also below, section 6. 24 It appears that the theory of parody, despite considerable sophistication, remains underdeveloped. See rhe most recent and derailed discussion of the views on parody throughout the ages in Rose (1993); on its subversive edge, note Kiremidjian (1970). In mosr cases, when rhe term parody is used, its meaning and constituents are not fully articulated. The same is true of the ancients. For the notion of parody in Aristotle (Poet., 1448a 13) and concomitant problems, cf. e.g. Genette (1982), 17 ff. Although the device itself was repeatedly exploited, its theoretical discussion remained cursory. It is clear, however, that the ancients, like most of rhe modems, treated parody as a comic imitation of both manner and matter: see characteristically, Quint., 9, 2, 35: parode. quod nomen ductum a canticis ad aliorum

similitudinem modulatis abusive etiam in versificationis ac sermonum imitatione servatur, cf. also Lucian, VH, I, 2, 9: "because everything in my story is a more or less comical parody of one or another of rhe poets, historians and philosophers of old." In what follows I employ the term parody as a tool of analysis devoid of its historical characteristics. 25 For a list containing definitions of parody from classical antiquity onwards, see Rose (1993), 280 ff.; cf Genette (1982), 17 ff. So far as I could establish, the closest to my own formulation is Grellmann's (1926-27) which, in Rose's (1993), 64, paraphrase, defines parody as "something which differs from travesty because it retains the formal elements of the original while changing rhe content in an unsuitable manner, where travesty retains the content of rhe original while clothing it in a new and unsuitable form." This formulation, however, with irs emphasis on changing and retaining the elements of manner and matter, fails to appreciate rhe interplay of text and context which I consider crucial. Genette ( 1982) treats the issue from the "transtextual" and "transgeneric" viewpoint, but his definitions of parody and travesty ("rravestissemenr burlesque") is not very helpful for rhe purpose of the present investigation (thus he describes parody as "le detournemenc de texte transformation minimale" and travesty as "la transformation srylistique foncrion degradante," (33)). Most of rhe modern critics, notably Bakhtin, make rhe terms parody and travesty largely interchangeable. This also includes the proponents of the Rezeptiontheorie, evidenced e.g. by Jauss (1976), 104 f, as translated in Rose (1993), 172: "A parody or travesty can exploit the discrepancies between high and low on the level of either form or content in order to attack its

a

a

329

NOTES TO CHAPTER

3, PP. 192-93

object ... through critical imitation or transform it into something new through an artistic heightening of the imitation." Even if, as semiotics teaches, the reality of life itself represents a text, both definitions still hold: the extremes of parody and travesty will be, respectively, caricature and pasquinade; of this last, an excellent example is given by Seneca's Apocolocyntosis.So far the most comprehensive study of parody and caricature in Roman culture is Cebe (1966) - on Petronius, cf. 224 ff., 264 ff., 280 ff., 313 ff., 331 ff.; for parody (in a broader sense than mine) as an artistically subversive device in the Satyricon, note esp. Zeitlin (1971 b), 636,648 f., who treats it as a reflection of the period's cultural and spiritual crisis, e.g.: "In effect, parody in Petronius, by embracing an entire literary tradition, expresses the incongruity and absurdity of an entire culture" (649). 26 When it aims not at an author, but at a genre, parody may coincide with travesty (which also holds true if it parodies not text bur life). A special case is an interaction of two literary works intended for comic effect by a third party: thus, for instance, a Sherlock Holmes story written in Shakespearean verse is a parody of Shakespeare, but a travesty of Conan Doyle. 27 For the failure to define the Satyricon in generic terms, see e.g. Kroll (1924); Perry (1967), 209 (even though he himself considers it under the heading of "comic romances" and points to its striking affinities with the Arabic maqamat, cf. Anderson's (1984), 174 ff. treatment of the Satyricon within the context of Near Eastern literary motifs); also Schmeling (1971). Zeitlin (1971 b), 634 ff., rightly emphasizes Petronius' radical originality that must be judged "in terms of its own premises" (633). Nore, more recently, Fedeli ( 1989), 348 "Nonostante l'indubbia importanza di tali componenti [fabula Milesia and satira Menippea] ne l'una ne l'altra ci aiucano a decifrare ii romanzo in suo complesso." Ancient literary theory was lacking a conception of the novel - cf. Slater (I 990), 234; also Cizek (1972). 444 - and therefore the Satyricon could not be thus categorized by his contemporaries. Its link to Greek romances was emphasized as early as Heinze ( 1899); cf. recently Barchiesi (1986). Zeitlin's (1971 b), discussion of the Satyricon as a picaresque novel avant-la-Lettre(650 ff.), and of Encolpius as a "picaro manque" (666 ff.), remains valuable. On the subject of menippean satire, see Kirk's (1980) collection of texts and commentaries; also Courtney ( 1962). The prosimetric character of this genre is indeed similar to that of the Satyricon, but this fact alone cannot suffice for identifying the latter with it in a generic sense, especially after fragments of two of the Greek prosimetric romances were recently discovered see Parsons (1971) and Haslam (1981). The view attributing the Satyricon to menippean satire (e.g. Scobie [ 1969], 83 ff.) went out of fashion for some time, but was recently revived by Relihan (1993), 91 ff., who treats menippean satire as generically based on the assumption "chat no world can be understood, that language is inadequate to express or confine reality, and the act of analysis is the work of a fool" (24). This pose-modernist posturing aside, there remain crucial differences, in regard both to form (e.g. length) and substance, and including the contrast in Petronius' emphasis on the fabulaic versus the argumentative, this last typical (even when it is intended as a parody) of all other ancient menippean satirists examined by the same scholar, little concerned as they were with the mere story or story celling. Consequently, Relihan's discussion suffers from focusing on pars pro toto, and although he recognizes chat "we may judge the Satyricon to be a picaresque novel on which the Menippean genre was imposed," his analysis of it is wholly controlled by the "imposed" framework. Note Walsh's (1970), 72, observation that the title "Satyricon" deliberately connotes both the Greek "Satyr" (as in "Satyr play") and the Roman satura, for which as a literary enterprise see Witke (1970), I ff.; Knoche (1975), 68 ff.; Coffey (I 989), 3 ff. Diomedes' ( CGF, Kailbel, 55 f.) formulation of satura assumes criticism of human vice - CoHey (1989), 9.

330

NOTES

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29

30 31

32 33

34

TO CHAPTER

3, PP. 193-95

That the Romans did distinguish between saturae and "menippean satire" is clear from Varro's different use of both these terms in the codification of his own writings. loannes Lydus (De Magistr., 1, 4]) or his source numbers Pecronius among satirists. Marcin (I 982) does not recognize the Neronian dating for the Satyricon and treats it generically in terms of Gyorgy Lukacs and Lucien Goldmann and their neo-Marxist "cheorie de roman." Bakhtin (1984), 115, explicitly cites Petronius' novel as an example of menippea. For a critique, in generic terms, of this conception, see Herzog (1989), 123 f. In my judgment, the fuller discussion of the Satyricon within the Bakhtinian framework of carnival, menippea and polyphony may prove fruitful, but it should be undertaken with caution. This is not, however, the purpose of the present study, though at times I will resort to Bakhtin's methods with the limited aim of highlighting and disentangling various issues related to the question of Petronius' dissidence. Cf. Relihan (1993), 6: "It seems that the menippea can be viewed as an intellectual attitude adopted toward the value of truth and the possibility of meaning, a particular world view, that may show up in a number of different genres." At one point (1984, 113) Bakhtin identifies this term with the genre of the ancient menippean satire. It must be noted, however, that through this very identification Bakhtin vitiates his own interpretative procedures by undercutting both the synchronic principle of his discussion and the broad scale on which it operates. Because of the larger and non-generic issues it relates to, calling (as does Bakhtin) menippea a "genre" involves problems not unlike those that would emerge if one, for instance, would treat as "genres" the phenomena of romanticism or impressionism. Bakhtin (1984), 119. For the period's "politicization of moralism," cf. above, the Introduction and eh. 1, section JO. Note Zeiclin (I 971 b), 639 ff, e.g.: "The behavior of those who theorize, bur who do not, and probably cannot, put their theories into practice, demonstrates the insufficiency of the theories as a valid guide to life or to art" (640). Cf., in contrast, Sullivan (I 968), 2.31, 266 ff., and passim, whose search for parallels (71 f.) in Horace and Juvenal making low characters to espouse serious views, seems to me misconceived: it is hypocrisy and pseudo-Stoicism that Horace, for instance, satirizes in the person of Davus (Sat., 2, 7); and I find it impossible to believe that Davus was seriously intended by Horace (himself by no means a Stoic) as a mouthpiece of the poet's own views (the same is often claimed, in the context of the Satyricon, as regards Encolpius, Agamemnon, Eumolpus ere.). A directly opposite standpoint is taken by Relihan (1993), 91 ff., and is based on his generic interpretation of menippean satire, in which he wants to include the Satyricon arguing that none of the utterances made by the characters yield a meaning since chose latter are themselves ironically undercut. Cf. George (1966), and Slater (1990), 141 ff., on the style, character, and heteroglossiaof the Satyricon. A helpful discussion of a similar problem in Apuleius is to be found in Winkler (I 985). For Encolpius as both personage and narrator, cf. Fedeli (1989), 357; also Veyne (I 964); for the T narrative and its antecedents in Latin tradition, see Beck (I 982). Beck's (1973) and ( I 975) view that it is the older Encolpius who tells his story in retrospect with (possibly) deliberate inventions and embellishments did not gain much support among scholars. Note George (1966) and Slater (1990), 141 ff., on speech and heteroglossiain the Satyricon. For this apostrophe cf. e.g. Sullivan (1968), 98 ff.; Walsh (1970), 106; Rankin (1971), 106 (with references); Raith (1970); Pellegrino (1975), ad loc. This is not the place to indulge in a convoluted discussion on the meaning and function of the poems in the Satyricon. In theory, the poems in the novel may serve as a vehicle to

331

NOTES

35

36

37

38

39 40

TO CHAPTER

J, PP. 195-97

express both the author's and the characters' points of view, or a mere commonplace; or provide an impartial commentary in the manner of the chorus in a play. They may serve to parody or travesty both what we now consider canonical classical texts as well as the texts entirely lost to us (as regards the latter, we are naturally lacking tools to establish the presence or the absence of such an intent). Note, however, Fedel i's ( 1989) fine argument on the uncanny correlation of some poems with the surrounding prose context: " ... se esso era elevato, le inserzioni in versi introducono un livello basso di riAessione; se, al concrario, ii tono era dimesso, la solennita del commenco poetico crea un netto contrasto col caractere del contesto" (361 ). This perfectly agrees with the Arbiter's procedure of strategic irony (as defined below). For poetry in Petronius, cf. Stubbe (1933); Musurillo (1961 ), 159 ff; Huxley (1970); Socharoff ( 1970); also Slater ( 1990), 160 ff. Much debate has been conducted on what must be understood under simplicitas - both in Pecronius' apostrophe and in Tacitus' description of his character (see above); see e.g. Barbieri (1983), 32 ff Rankin (1971), 26 ff. and passim (see also his fr)otnotes), argues that in the latter case it meant "outspokenness," a kind of Cynic parrhesia; a separate issue is constituted by the question whether T acitus' use of the word simplicitas reflects his actual acquaintance with the text of, at least, Petronius' apostrophe. Rankin ( l 971 ), l 06 ff., following Bogner (l 94 I), makes an interesting though inconclusive argument to that eHect on linguistic grounds. For the meanings of simplicitas in Julio-Claudian literature see Ferrero (1980), esp. 141 ff on its relation to adulatio. This part of my argument much benefited from the comments of Gordon Williams and Zlatko Plese. The link between Encolpius' improvisation ( Ter corripui terribilem manu bipennem etc.) and the apostrophe is provided by the reference to severioris notae homines in the intervening prose passage which relates both to the subject of the earlier poem and to the constricta ftonte Catones of the one that follows. le seems co me unlikely that the vocative Catones was intended co imply Petronius' immediate libertine audience - chat would have meant a sort of oxymoron; rather, the author had in mind the conservative readers at large who disapproved of his and his fellow proAigates' behavior - cf. Catullus. 5, 2: rumoresque senum severiorum. Relihan ( 1993), 93, rakes "book" (i.e. the entire Satyricon) as the sole possible meaning of opus. This would have been so if the word was used without a qualifier (cf e.g. Quint., 4, I, 34; Ovid Ars, 3, 206). When modified by the genitive (like novae simplicitatis), however, it may mean also "the product of" (e.g. Virg. Aen., I 0, 448 f.; Tib., 3. 4, 36 f; Ovid Met., 13, 289 f.) and even "a theme" (cf. Satyr., 118, 6: Ecce belli civdis ingens opus). On the other hand, the conventional reading of the apostrophe as a mere enhancement of Encolpius' apology for the obscenity that precedes it invalidates the emphasis placed on the "new simplicity'' since Encolpius' improvisation oftered nothing "unusually frank" compared either with the earlier parts of the narrative (e.g. in the Quarcilla episode) or with the sotadic and priapic verse that were in wide circulation among the educated public of the period. I owe this suggestion to Tomas Venclova; cf. a similar device in Hor. Sat., 2, 4; 2, 8; on the function of ekphrasis in the opening of Greek romances, see e.g. Slater (l 990), 91. Bakhtin ( 1986), 328. The Satyricon was designated "roman polyphonique" as early as by Callebat ( 1974), 300. What seems still lacking, however, is an inquiry into the origin of the novel's polyphony and its effects in terms other than those of structural analysis, as well as its inrerpreration in the Neronian political and cultural context. Morson and Emerson ( 1990), 232 f. Cf. Slater (1990), 36 f., 46 tI, 55 f., 89 f. et passim, on the Satyricort's link to

332

NOTES

TO CHAPTER

.1, PP. 197-99

et:

41

42

43 44

45

46

47

48

mimes, masks, performance and improvisation; Walsh ( l 970), 25 ff., I 04. In the mime "no man's motives are what they seem" (ibid., 27) - a connection between theatricality and dissimulatio, cf above, rhe lnrroducrion (and notes); see also below, section 6. The recent derailed study of theatrical influences on Perronius by Panayorakis ( 1995) appeared roo late for me ro make any use of its findings. "[The] destruction of the wholeness and finalized quality of a man is facilitated by the appearance, in the menippea, of a dialogic relationship to one's own self' Bakhtin (l 984), 117. Hence, for instance, a belief that "every joke has a grain of truth" and the oxymoronic potential of the ironic discourse. Starring with Collignon ( 1892), irony in Petronius is, for the most part, treated as an exclusively artistic device, and this tends to overlook its political and practical implications, cf e.g. Fedeli ( 1989), 365. Relihan (1993), 91 ff, attempts to explain it away by the requirements of menippean satire as a genre to which he relegates the Satyrfron. Rather, the reverse seems to have been true: rooted in the needs of dissimufatio, the adoption of strategic irony necessarily led the author to the choice of the menippean mode of narrative (cf above). Zeirlin (19716), 659, offers a brief treatment of Petronius' irony in terms of Northrop Frye's "anatomy of criticism." For the dangers of literary recitations ar rhe dinner parries, note the affair of Anristius Sosianus, AD 62 - Rudich (1993), 55 ff. Cf. Bakhtin (1984), 204, on the role of what he calls the "other person's discourses" in a polyphonic novel as "independent and autonomous speech and semantic centers, not subordinated to the verbal and semantic dictatorship of a monologic, unified style and a unified tone." In practice, this means that such discourses may be taken on equal merit and separated from their context, thereby paradoxically enhancing the coumer-rherorical reading relevant co rhe reader's immediate experience and expectations. Cf. Bakhtin ( 1984), 137. I hnd the closest modern parallel to the Satyricon in the late Venedicr Erofeev's masterpiece Moscow to the End of the Line (Moskva-Petushkz) which is also a first-person narrated travelogue, polyphonic and menippean. Cf. Cicero's appreciation of Varro (Acad., l, 2, 8; 1, 3, 9). To dispute, e.g. pace Wicke (1970), 166 f., and Anderson (1982), 68 ff., that rhe Satyricon is a satire is, in my judgment, to deny the obvious; cf. e.g. Sullivan (1968), 158 ff.; for ancient and modern definitions of satire see e.g. Coffey (1989), 9 f. The sense of fun, abundant in Petronius, does nor need co detract from his critical intent or effect: it simply means char in contrast to, say, Persius or Juvenal, he is both satirical and funny. Whether his satire is necessarily moralist is another matter. Nore Adamiecz (1987), 345: "nicht jeder satirische Auror muss norwendig eine moralistische Bocschaft tibermirceln oder gar die sittliche Besserung seiner Leser anstreben wollen;" cf. Sandy ( I 969), 293 ff. (see also below, section 7). The Satyricon remains satirical even when it is read (e.g. by Relihan) as a satire of (moralise) satire. In several respects Petronius' critical procedures are remarkably like chose of Swift and some of his contemporaries - see Rawson (1973), 33 ff On the genre of satura cf. above, n. 27. It may be added chat Petronius' social criticism is apparent from the very selection of the phenomena he portrays, such as the rise of the freedman class, or the activities of the fortune hunters. Nore on Craton as Rome, Zeitlin (1971a}, 69, 72 f. Fedeli's (1989), 366, view of the Arbiter as a "porcavoce di una morale sostanzialmere aristocracica e passarisra" seems to me misconceived, arising perhaps from the questionable assumption of his literary conservatism (see below, section 5). As will he argued, Petronius' moral sensibilities were complex, and only to some extent ref-leered those of his immediate milieu, the aristocratic minority of pauci et

333

NOTES TO CHAPTER

49

50 51

52

53

54 55

56

57

3. PP. 199-203

validi who tended to repudiate the traditional values of their own class; cf. on them Knabe (I 970). The Elder Cato for the ancestral mores, the Younger for Stoicism. On the subject of Petronius' "anti-conventional" ethics cf. Gigante ( 1980), 67 ff. who contrasts his nova simplicitas rooted in his esthetics with the moralist prisca simplicitas of the Catones associable with the idealization of the old Republic. Cf Gill (1973), 184. Cf. further below, section 7. Similarly, Encolpius' comical slaughter of the sacred geese of Priapus (136) can be read (and intended) as a travesty of the heroic legend of how the sacred geese of Juno saved Rome during the Gallic invasion; and Giton's deceptive readiness for self-sacrifice or self-mutilation (including self-castration - 80, 94, I 08) as a travesty of the devotio ritual. Note Walsh's (1970), 87 f., witty suggestion that the relationship between Encolpius and Ascyltus (persistently referred to as "brothers") travesties the quarrel of Romulus and Remus. Cf. the potential comical effect of Encolpius' vilification of Giton (81, 5: Quid ille alter? Qui (tamquam] die togae virilis stolam sumpsit, qui ne vir esseta matre persuasus est, qui opus muliebre in ergastulofecit, qui postquam conturbavit et libidinis suae solum vertit, reliquit veteris amicitiae nomen et, pro pudor, tamquam mulier secutu!eia unius noctis tactu omnia vendidit) echoing Cicero's abuse of Antony (Phil.. 2, 44). For Petronius' similar technique in discrediting the entire subject of the Civil War, see below, section 5. In the context of this argument one is reminded of Persius' appeal (Sat., l. 69 ff, esp. 76-98 char the poets of his time should work with themes from the Latin national past. Cf. on this Arrowsmith in the Introduction to his translation of the Satyricon (1959), xii: "No one familiar with Petronius' ironic habits will miss the deliberate disingenuousness of that defense [i.e. apostrophe], but equally an awareness of irony should not obscure what Petronius is saying." See above, eh. I, section 12. Cf. 83., I 0: Qui pelago credit, magno se faenore tol!it;/ Qui pugnas et castra petit, praecingitur auro;/ Vilis adulator picto iacet ebrius ostro,/ Et qui sollicitat nuptas, ad praemia peccat:I Sola pruinosis horret facundia pannisl Atque inopi lingua desertas invocat artes. Cf 85, 1: hospitium Pergami accepi. One may recall a solemn mythological parallel to Eumolpus' transgression: that of Laius, son of Labdacus, who caused, by the seduction of his host's son, a divine curse that eventually led to the crimes and tragedies of the Oedipus cycle. For Eumolpus' posturing as a moralist and the story of che Pergamene boy, cf e.g. Paratore, 2 (1933), 287 ff; Sullivan (1968), 92, 111, 194, 204 ff; Walsh (1970). 94 ff Eumolpus proceeds, in a similar vein: Quis umquam venit in templum et votum fecit, si ad eloquentiam pervenisset? Quis si philosophia fontem attigisset? Ac ne bonam quidem mentem aut bonam va!etudinem petunt, sed statim antequam limen Capito/ii tangant, alius donum promittit, si propinquum divitem extulerit, alius, si thesaurum effederit, alius, si ad trecenties sestertium salvus pervenerit, and ends up with a pointed attack on even the official religious practices: ipse senatus, recti bonique praeceptor, mi/le pondo auri Capito!io promittere solet, et ne quis dubitet pecuniam concupiscere, lovem quoque peculio exornat, 88, 9 (cf a comment on this sequence in another context, pp. 211 f below); for parallel thoughts on the decay of religion and human materialistic attitudes to gods see Persius Sat., 2, passim, esp. 59 ff., cf. Luc. BC, 5, 104 f., 111 ff. On the period's view of cultural decline, see Williams (1978), 12

ff 58 94, 1 f.: "O felicem" inquit "matrem tuam, quae te talem peperit: macte virtute esto. Raram fecit mixturam cum sapientia forma. ltaque ne putes te tot verba perdidisse, amatorem invenisti. Ego laudes tuas carminibus implebo. Ego paedagogus et custos

334

NOTES

59

60

61

62 63

64 65

66

67

TO CHAPTER

3, PP. 203-206

etiam quo non iusseris sequar." Cf. 92, 4: timuique ne in contubernium recepissem Ascylti parem; and 94, 3: alioquin quem animum adversus Ascylton sumpseram, eum in Eumolpi sanguinem exercuissem. For the episode on the ship, cf. Rouge (I 971). Note another parody of legalistic language in the speech of Quarrilla (18). Sommariva (1990) reads Quarrilla's epigram (18, 6) as a caricature of Seneca's De Clementia. Ct: I 24, 3 ff.: Qui statim opessutZSsummo cum certamine in Eumolpum congesserunt ... Certatim omnes heredipetae muneribus gratiam Eumolpi sollicitant, 125, I: dum haec magno tempore Crotone aguntur . .. et Eumolpus felicitate plenus prioris fortunae esset oblitus statum adeo ut suis iactaret neminem gratiae suae ibi posse resistere impuneque suos, si quid deliquissent in ea urbe, benejicio amicorum laturos. Note Zeitlin (1971 a), 63: "The mime proposed by Eumolpus in Croton is the culmination in human terms of pretense and dissimulation." The theme of legacy hunting could, among other things, well have been politically sensitive: the emperors tended to force many of their subjects, largely by unofficial pressure and practices, to bequeath chem portions of their estates in order that the rest could be inherited by the legitimate heirs - accordingly, even the emperors may be described, in their own way, as legacy hunters; see on Nero's similar practices, Suet. Nero, 32; also Rudich (1993), 133, 295. For this topic in ancient satire, cf. Schmid (I 951). 140, 1: Matrona inter primas honesta, Philomela nomine, quae multas saepe hereditates officio aetatis extorserat. For this episode, cf. Paratore, 2 (1933), 433 ff.; Sullivan (1968), 245; Walsh (1970), 108 f.; Van Thiel (1971), 49 ff.; also Cicu (1992), 163 ff. 140, I I: Nee se reiciebat a blanditiis doctissimus puer, sed me numen inimicum ibi quoque invenit. Sochatoffs (1962), 451, belief that Encolpius' initial response to Eumolpus - qui videretur nescio quid magnum promittere (83, 7) - suggests that he does not share negative views on the latter's poerry is a clear case of misunderstanding: the quoted phrase purports, on the contrary, to emphasize the old man's ability for imposture and pretence. The vulgar house manager Bargates, comissioning Eumolpus to write a rhymed curse of his mistress (96 f.: may it have been intended as a travesty of Archilochus and his iambics?) is made the only admirer of his poetry, with the clear purpose of further ridiculing Eumolpus' graphomania. Cf. e.g. Misner (1938); Zeitlin (1971a); and, most recently, Connors (1994). On Eumolpus' ambiguity as a character, cf. Gagliardi ( 198 I). Baldwin (1981), I 38, following Rose ( 1971 ), 80 f., wanes to see in the figure of Eumolpus a hint at Persius' teacher Remmius Paelemon with whom he apparently had in common "rampant bisexuality and Auenc extemporisation of verses." Parricularly in Dio; cf. Griffin ( 1976), 424 ff.. and above, eh. I. In connection with Eumolpus' homosexuality, it may be worth noting that Seneca had a similar reputation and attempted to defend himself in De Vita Beata (27, 5); moreover, he was accused of having sexually corrupted his own pupil (Dio, 61, 10, 4). In his address to Giron (94), Eumolpus describes him as both amator and paedagogus;cf his story of the Pergamon boy and his role as a "teacher" in Craton (pp. 202 ff. above). Cf Encolpius' incriminations of Ascylrus in Satyr., 81, 4: Adufescens omni fibidine impurus et sua quoque confessione dignus exilio, stupro liber, stupro ingenuus, cuius anni ad tesseram venierunt, quern tamquam puellam conduxit etiam qui virum putavit. Note, e.g., Antonius Primus, a condemned will forger under Nero, turning inro one of the strongmen in rhe subsequenr Civil War (Tac. Ann., 14, 40; Hist., 2, 86; 3, I), or T. Vinius, Galba's favorite, an exposed thief (Tac. Hist., I, 48). For attempts to reconstruct Encolpius' own criminal past, cf Bagnani ( 1956) and Pack (1960).

335

NOTES

TO CHAPTER

3. PP. 206-208

68 Cf. e.g. in one of his moments of despair, 81, 3: Ergo me non ruina terra potuit haurire? Non iratum etiam innocentibus mrtre? Effugi iudicium, harenae imposui, hospitem occidi, ut inter [tot] audaciae nomina mendicus, exul, in deversorio Graecae urbis iacerem desertus? Nore his disarmingly cynical statement that the covetous exist in order to be dispossessed by rhe conmen, and so do the fools to be deceived by the clever, 140, 15: nee ulli enim celerius homines incidere debent in malam fortzmam, quam qui alienum concupiscunt. Unde plani autem, unde levatores viverent, nisi aut locellosaut sonantes aere sacellospro hamis in turbam mitterent? Sicut muta animalia cibo inescantur, sic homines non caperentur nisi spei aliquid morderent; naturally, the working of the rhetoricized mentality allowed all comments of this type to be read backwards - in the course of his adventures Encolpius himself often proves both covetous and foolish. 69 Encolpius is prepared to consider that misdemeanor is regularly visited with retribution - cf his fear of the exposure of Eumolpus' Crotonian frnud (125) and in particular: Dii deaeque, quam r,'l(r/eest e.,·tralegem viventibus: quicquid rneruerunt, semper expectant (ibid., 4), a derail testifying to the strength of inertia and tradition even for a society in the grips of value crisis (cf. pp. 206 f above, from che same perspective, of the mos maiorum residue in Petronius' own attitudes; even Nero was not above superstitious fears of his mother's vengeance, playing them out on the srage in the roles of recanted or punished criminals (Suet. Nero, 39, 46)). 70 Williams (1978), 288; on Pecronius' reportage of contemporary ideas and fashions, see Williams (1978), 12 and passim. For the moral residue in negativism, note Iser ( 1978), 219: "intensified negations denote deeply entrenched dispositions, as well as the degree of reflection necessa1y if the negation is to lead to a positive outcome." 71 .Suet. Nero, 18-19 (libido); 26-27 (petulantia); 33-39 (crudelitas); see also Rudich ( 1993), 84, 284. One may note, in this context, the voyeuristic character of JulioClaudian society discussed in Michael Behen's forthcoming dissertation; cf. Sullivan's (I 968), 237 ff., remarks on Petronius' own scopophilic tendencies. 72 Group sex: orgy staged by Quarcilla (18 ff.); vo!uptates on the ship (113, with lacunae); Eumolpus' sexual acrobJtics in Craton ( 140). On the "catalogue of vices" composed by Petronius and sent to Nero, see p. 253 below. Homosexuality: Encolpius is involved with Ciron, Ascyltus, Lichas (probably), Eumolpus, and Philomela's son; Ciron with Ascylrus and Eumolpus; Ascylcus sells himself co a wealthy eqta:')~ to this must be added the appearence of rwo cinaedi in the orgy scene; homosexual displays at the Cena; and the tale of the Pergamene boy. Our sources mention with certainty at lease three of Nero's male lovers: Ocho (Suet. Otho, 2) Pythagoras (Tac. Ann., 15, 37; Suet. Nero, 29 = Doryphorus; Dio 62, 28, 3; 63, 13, 2; 22, 4), and Sporus (Suet. Nero, 28 f.; Dio, 62, 28, 3; 63, 13, 1) and, with a reference co the rumors, also Britannicus (Tac. Ann., 13, 17; Dio apud Joann. Antioch., fr. 90) and Seneca (Dio, 61, 10, 4). Nore in this connection Williams (1978), 289, on the possible relationship between the Satyricon and Petronius' deathbed "catalogue of vices.'' On the role of sexuality in the Satyricon see, among others, Sullivan (1968), 232 ff.; Arrowsmith (1966); Zeitlin (19716), 655 f.; Gill (l 973); Canali ( 1986), 3 ff; Slater (1990), 38 ff. 73 Cf. Slater ( 1986); also id. ( 1990), 73 f. On the episode, see e.g. hiedlander ( 1906), ad loc.; Maiuri ( 1945), ad loc.; Giardina (1972); Smith ( 1975), ad loc.; esp. Crondona (1980), 83 ff. and Miller (1989), both missing, however, much of its potentially political implications. Cf. Slater ( 1990), 73 (note): "The Priapic phallos becomes an embodiment of che Augustus, giving a new meaning to the tide 'father of the country'" (che title pater pmriae appears on Nero's coins from AD 55). The libation co Occavian, the fmure Augustus, following the customary libation co the Lares in the course of the banquet, was officially decreed by the senate in 30 BC (Dio, 51, 19, 7). On rhe hasis of che feliciter + dative formula Miller (I 989), 193

336

NOTES

74

75

76

77 78

79

80

8I 82 83

TO CHAPTER

3, PP. 208-11

(note) persuasively links ic ro che living person, i.e. Nero. I am not at all persuaded by Slacer's suggestion, based on che parallel with Joe Orton's play, that the emperor would in fact have been flattered. One need not necessarily subscribe to the theories of Michel Foucault and his followers in order to rec~gnize the intricate relationship of power and sexuality: both affect the deepest levels of human emotions and are combined in phenomena like sado-masochism. On the other hand, I find Foucault's claim that sexuality is a mere social construct based on the power principle reductionist and simplistic. There are cultural contexts in which a sexual object is by no means a subject of exploitation, but rather vice versa - as for instance, in Greek paiderastia or Provenc;:algaia scienza. Cf~ e.g. 108, 3: Negat Eumolpus passurum se . .. interpellatque saevientium minas non solum voce sed etiarn manibus. For other characters, note 18, 5: Quod si non adnuissetis de hac medicina quam peto, iam parata erat in crastinum turba, quae et iniuriam meam vindicaret et dignitatem. On the inversion of sexual roles in the Quartilla episode see, especially, Slater ( 1990), 41 f. lncidencal!y, l find entirely implausible Walsh's (1970), 90, idea char che name Quartilla may be a "punning reference" to Nero's wife Octavia. Cf. fmudavique animum dissidentem (I 00, 2) and: Non commune est quod natura optimum fecit? . .. Solus ergo amorfurtum potius quam praemium erit? ( I 00, 1); for the character of Quarcilla, cf. Cicu ( I 992), 1 I ff Nero, of course, far surpassed Trimalchio in sexual mistreatment of slaves: one recalls e.g. his castration of Sporus to make him further resemble che deceased Poppaea Sabina (Dio 62, 28). Cf. 92, 9: Habebat enim inguinum pondus tam grande, ut ipsum hominem laciniam fascini crederesand 97, 3: Nee longe a praecone Ascyltos stabat amictus discoloria veste atque in lance argentea indicium et fi'dem praeferebat. That Encolpius at Craton appeared embarking on che same course as Ascyltus, chat is, of male prostitute, follows from his first exchange with Chrysis, 126, I ff.: Quia nosti venerem tuam, superbiam captas vendisque amplexus, non commodas ... nisi quodformam prostituis ut vendas?. .. Sive ergo nobis vendis quod peto, mercator paratus est. Cf. 69, 3: ut ego sic solebam ipsumam meam debattuere, ut etiam dominus suspicaretur, it appears (ibid.) char a slave Massa played a not dissimilar role in Habinnas' and Scintilla's household. "There is nothing shameful in doing what che master orders" - that is a standard excuse of collaboration with tyranny from Nero (and earlier) co the presenr day; cf. Eprius Marcellus in Tac. Hist., 4, 8; also Rudich (1993), 183. For Trirnalchio's sexual career, see e.g. Sullivan (1968), 121,235; Rankin (1971 ), 24, 82. See the detailed discussion in Williams (I 978), 184 ff.; cf also above, eh. 2. In my judgment, the entire Roman culture was inordinately susceptible to sadomasochism. Still, in the Satyricon the amount of sado-masochisric display is striking: in the span of the extant narrative Encolpius is Aogged no less than four times (11, 105, 132, 134); and Giton once (105); Eumoplus is repeatedly stoned and otherwise hurt (90, 92, 95); Ascylcus and Encolpius are sexually tormented by Quarcilla and her crew (20 ff), and Encolpius alone by rwo witches ( 138); add to this recurrent beatings (or threats of beatings) of the slaves in the course of the Cena. On the sexual-policical careers of some of Pecronius' contemporaries, cf Rudich (1993), 29 f., 268 f., 279 f. Cf. on this Slater (1990), 40 f.; also Zeitlin (1971 b), 654 ff. (and notes). For religion and superstition in che Centi,see Grondona (1980). Cf. the story of Queen Dido's treasure-trove (Tac. Ann., 16, I f.); also Rudich (1993), 132 f., 294. On Ganymede's complaint of religious decline, Friedlander (1906), ad loc.; d~ Paratore, 2 (1933), 139 ff.; Maiuri (1945}, ad lac.; Sullivan

337

NOTES

TO CHAPTER

3. P. 212

(1968), 142 ff.; Rankin (1971), 15; on Eumolpus' complaint, see Paratore, 2 (1933), 271 ff.; Sullivan (1968), 204 ff.; Walsh (1970), 96 ff. As regards the motif of the altars profaned and the loss of gods, note Zeitlin (1971 a), 65. 84 As in 17, 5: Utique nostra regio tarn praesentibus plena est numinibus, ut focilius possis deum quam hominem invenire (cf. Sr Augustine's critique of animism in Roman religion, Civ. Dei, 4, 8); 140, 4: simulavitque se in temp/um ire ad vota nuncupanda. Cf. the view that the gods may be bought by money ironically expressed in the Priapic context of the Oenothea episode (I 37, 6): Ecce duos aureos pono, unde possitis et deos et anseres emere. 85 Cf. the reading of the (sis theme of The Golden Ass in Winkler ( 1985), 227 ff. Eastern religions caused at least some excitement at Nero's court as is evidenced by Poppaea Sabina's involvement with Judaism Qos. Vita, 16; Ant,, 20, I 95); cf. RE 43, 87 f. (Hanslik), and Turcan (1967), 10) and probably with other Eastern cults as well (her funeral rite was performed regum externorum consuetudine, Tac. Ann., 16, 6, 2; Plin. NH, 12, 83). Note also Cumont's (1913), 145 ff. argument that Nero was initiated by Tiridates in Mithraic mysteries; cf. Plin. NH, 30, 17 (magos secum adduxerat, magicis etiam cenis eum initiaverat) and Dio, 63, 5, 2; Suet. Nero, 34; and Plin. NH, 30, 14 f. Note further Suet. Nero, 64, on Nero and Dea Syria, and his devotion to the mysterious imaguncula puellaris, "qui pourrait bien etre quelque autre Venus de !'Orient semitique" - Turcan (1967), 1O; cf id. (\ 989), 202, 237, 362. For a possible assimilation of Nero with Abraxas, cf. Janssens ( 1988).

86 Cf. Pinna (1987-88), 113, according co whom the parody in the Quartilla episode "pone comicamente ... religioni misteriche sotto l'egida dell'itifallico Priapo, risolvendo dunque, e avvilendone spessore e valenza religiosi, nell' ambi codissacran re, e ancora di abbassamenro, dell'orgiasmo sessuale sfrenato." As regards the role of syncrecism in Priapic worship, see e.g. Diod. Sic., 4, 6, 4: "and in the sacred rites, not only of Dionysus bur of practically all other gods as well, chis god [i.e. Priapus] being introduced in the sacrifices to the accompaniment oflaughter and amusement receives honor to some extent." Note Rudd ( 1966), 69: "In Greece Priapus blended with aspects of Hermes and Pan, and his adaptability is further proved by his admission to certain Orphic rites in which he was regarded as a symbol of regeneration." Hor. Sat., 1, 8 makes Priapus hilariously hostile to witchcraft: he frightens off two old hags Canidia and Sagana by farting and thus destroys their sorcery. Petronius' equivalents Proselenos and Oenothea, despite their service and devotion co the phallic god, fare in fact no better in their attempts co cure Encolpius from his impotence. Garrido (1930) points our chat the poem in Satyr., 135 (Non !ndum fulgebat ebur, quod inhaeserat auro etc.) is the only extant description bearing on the official cult of Priapus in classical literature; for further details about Priapic worship in classical anciquicy, see e.g. Scott (l 966), 119 ff. Naturally, the Satyricon provides for only a profane view on mystery religions, from the perspective of the prejudiced and uninitiated; at the same time, such sects as worshippers of Attis, Cybele, or Sabazios clearly combined in their rites mysticism and orgiasm, ecstasy and frenzy. 87 Note 16, 3: cuius vos sacrum ante cryptam turbastis; 17, 4: neque enim impune quisquam quod non licuit adspexit, ibid. 8 f.: ne scilicet iuvenili impufo licentia quod in sacello Priapi vidistis vulgetis deorumque consilia proferatis in popufum ... ne nocturnas religiones iocum risumque faciatis, neve traducere velitis tot annorum secreta, quae vix tres homines noverzmt, 18, 3: neque sacra quemquam vulgaturum. Cf. also Encolpius' slaughter of Priapus' sacred geese ( 137). Nore che speculations in Sullivan (1968), 140 ff. on the possible earlier Priapic episodes in the Satyricon. Baldwin's (1973) doubts regarding ira Priapi as the narrative's major motif are unjustified.

338

NOTES

TO CHAPTER

3, PP. 212-15

88 Since ironic replications are attested elswhere in the Satyricon (Ganymede and Eumolpus on the decline of religion - above; Agamemnon and Echion on the principles of education - below), it would fit the narrative pattern if Quartilla's crew was the same as that surprised by the trio at the "devotions." On the travesty of the hieros gamos, see Rankin ( 1971), 55. Similarly, Giton's deceptive readiness for self-immolation (in particular, his threat of self-castration in l 08) clearly travesties mystery cults, such as that of Attis. 89 This would support Cichorius' (196 I), 438 f., witty conjecture that Encolpius' original offence may have been that he literally acted as a substitute of Priapus at the orgiastic rices. For the Priapea see the recent commented edition by Parker (1988). On other affinities of Petronius and the Priapea (especially, Priap., 68 which travesties Homer) see, notably, Rankin (1971 ), 52 ff. 90 This would have been especially driven home in the case chat, as is occasionally argued (e.g. Allen [1962]), che Neronian bacchanalia did possess culcic or ritualistic elements; on the other hand, Petronius' demystification of the "arcane" practices could have been appreciated by Nero, who we know, for instance, feared the Eleusinian mysteries (Suet. Nero, 34). 91 The remaining six lines are deleted by Wehle: Tantum dicta valent. Taurorum jlamma quiescitl Virgineis extincta sacris, Phoebeia Gree/ Carminibus magicis socios mutavit Ulixis,/ Proteus esseso/et quicquid libet. Hie ego callens/ Artibus IdaeosJrutices in gurgite sistam/ Et rursus fluvios in summo vertice ponam; cf. Slater (1990), 130; also Paratore, 2 (1933), 423 ff.; Sullivan (1968), 189 ff.; Walsh (1970), 42; Pellegrino (1975); and for the characters of two witches, Cicu (1992), 170 ff. 92 Cf. the hyperbolic description of the powers possessed by Ericrho and her kind, e.g. in BC 6, 461-91; there is also present an element of parody, derived from the fact chat Ericcho is described, and Oenochea improvises, in the same meter hexameters. For Erictho see above, eh. 2, section 10; the terminus ante quern of Nero's ban on Lucan is AD 65, mentioned by Dio (although Dio's chronology is often erratic). That Nero and his intimates could have obtained the full text of the Bel/um Civile despite che ban is not surprising: it muse have circulated in a sort of samizdat, and the delatores abounded even in close dissident circles (cf. the affair of Antisrius Sosianus - Rudich (1993), 55 ff.). As regards Ovid Am., 1, 8, l ff., note the synonymity of two names (Dipsas and Oenochea, both connoting drunkness). Still, I hesitate to consider Petronius' poem a strict parody of Ovid since Petronius' witch delivers hexameters while Ovid's is described in elegiacs; similarly, this is not a strict travesty because both characters operate in humorous contexts which in itself undercuts the travesty's potential effect. Finally, Ovid Am., 1, 8, together with his Met., 7, 180 ff. (the Medea episode), must have served as one of Lucan's own sources in drawing Erictho. I have no doubt, however, char Petronius humorously reflected on Hor. Sat., 1, 8 (cf n. 86 above). 93 See Bakhrin (1968), Introduction and eh. I, e.g. 50: "in rhe system of [carnival] grotesque imagery, death and renewal are inseparable in life as a whole, and life as a whole can inspire fear least of all;" cf ibid., 6 f on the laughter culture as an unofficial aspect of the Roman tradition. 94 Arrowsmith (1966). One exception may be che Widow of Ephesus story (111 f.) which both Bakhtin (1968), 299, and Arrowsmith (1966), 136 f., read as a lifeasserting parable. This is, however, clearly an "alien body" as regards the principal tenor of the Satyricon, the wandering plot its author must have derived from the tradition of Milesian tales. 95 Bakhcin (1968), 46 ff.; note Bakhtin's recognition (5 I) of W. Kayser's picture of (modernise) grotesque laughter: "Laughter combined with bitterness which takes the grotesque form acquires the traits of mockery and cynicism, and finally becomes satanic" - cf. the ending of the extant text of the Satyricon with the vision

339

NOTES

96

97

98

99

100

101

102

103 l 04

TO CHAPTER

3, PP. 215-19

of a cannibalistic feast. Callebat (1974), 292 ff., is one early attempt co interpret Petronius in Bakhtinian terms of the "carnivalesque" and "rire ambivalent;" cf. on the grotesque in the Satyricon, Canali ( 1986), 23 ff. Cf. e.g. Sullivan ( 1968), 259: "If there is a 'quasi-moral' principle at work, it is the principle ... of taste, be it taste in literature or behavior; but caste itself dictates that even this be not taken coo seriously." This is something which is not entirely unfamiliar to us if one considers "the Hollywood mentality," characteristic of certain attitudes in some segments of the US populace. Cf. Trimalchio's innocently sobering sententia on the same theme in his exchange with Agamemnon: Hoe . .. si foctum est, controversia non est; si foctum exchange see Paratore, 2 non est, nihil est (48, 6). For the Encolpius-Agamemnon ( I 933), 1 ff.; Sullivan (I 968), 53 ff., 58 tI; Walsh (I 970), 85 ff.; Rankin (1971), 11 f.; Cizek (1975); Slater (1990), 27 ff., 242 ff.; and in extenso Pellegrino (1985). For the review of scholarship on Petronius' "critique of rhetoric," see Soverini (1985). On the possibility that the opening chapters may have been an ironic evocation of the work of the Elder Seneca, see Sullivan ( 1985 ), 173. Note also Kennedy (1972), 460 ff. On rhe meaning of libertas under rhe Julio-Claudians, see e.g. Rudich ( 1993), xviii f. For the rherorical exercise on tyrannicide in school, cf. Sen. Rhee. Contr., 1, 7; 2, 5; 3, 6; 4, 7; 5, 8; 7, 6; 9, 4; regarding Caligula's atrocities and the story of Pasror (Sen. Ira, 2, 33) see above, eh. 1, section 1 I. Note 3, 1: "Adulescem" inquit "quoniam sermonem habes non publici st1poriset, quod rarissimum est, amas bonam mentem '; cf. Rankin ( 1971 ), 39. For the fabulous dimension of the Satyricon, its "universe imaginaire," and its "depassement du quoridien" see Thomas (1986), l 03 f., esp. 150 f. Note ibid., 90, an observation chat "voyage se transforme en fuice," a turn that to my mind correlates with an escapist potential the novel provided for its contemporary reader. Gill (1973), 178 points, with reference to Sullivan, to the disparity of the real and imaginary existent even on rhe stylistic level - i.e. of the novel's "shore, polished and rhythmic sentences" and the "high degree of excitement, despair and astonishment" which the words are supposed to communicate regarding the condition of the characters, including the narraror. Note also George's ( I 966), 338 ff, winy argument on Giron (and his language) as a product of poorly digested rhetorical school education; on the question of verisimilitude in the Satyricon see further below, pp. 220 f. On C. Cassius Longinus see Rudich (1993), 50 ff., U7 ff; on Vipstanus Messala, ibid., 202 ff. Cf. 6, 2: Dum ergo iuvenes sententias rident ordinemque totius dictionis infomant. On similar grounds, Agamemnon's poem (5, v. 1: Artis severae si quis ambit effictus etc.) which recapitulates his argument, sounds like a parody of someone like Persius or even Horace. Although it cannot be ruled our entirely that a demand to ignore "the arrogant countenance of the Palace" (alto regiam trucem vu/tu, 5, v. 4) could be counter-rhetorically read as alluding to the dangers of the emperor's patronage, and an injunction against "paid applause of the actor's laughter on stage" (neve plausor in scaenam! Sedeat redemptus histrionis ad rictus, vv. 7 f) as a reference to the emperor's scandalous theatrics (the word regia commonly refers to the Palatine). For attitudes to literacy found in the Satyricon, cf Best (1965). Note Lynch's (1981-82) positive interpretation of Echion's character. The text is corrupt; I accept a lacuna in 46, 5 and the interpretation, followed by Smith ( 1975), ad loc., which assumes that Echion had only one son named Primigenius, and two teachers; cf. Paratore, 2 (1933), 146 ff.; Perrochat (1952), ad loc.; ~edgwick (1950), ad loc.; Pellegrino (1975), ad loc.; and Whittick ( I 957). An alternative view, holding that there were one teacher and two sons, the elder of

340

NOTES

105

106

107

108

109

110

111

TO CHAPTER

3, PP. 219-21

them Primigenius, is found in the Loeb Heselcine-Warmingcon translation (1969); cf. Maiuri (I 945), ad loc. The point of my argumenc stands either way. Cf. Sullivan's (1985), 179, comment on the "litera1y establishment which at this time coincided with the political establishmenc." For a derailed treatment of the "new simplicity" apostrophe perceived as an exposition of the poetica petroniana, see Barbieri ( 1983), esp. 11 ff, 32 tL cf. Gigance ( 1980): "eliminazione di ogni eufemismo" (69). Cf. further below, pp. 237 f The theme of Troy's fall, in addition to Nero's Halosis !Iii, is taken on by Seneca in tragedies (Agamemnon and Troades); consider also the extant anonymous !lias Latina and the lost !liacon by Lucan; cf on this Neraudau (1985) (see more on this below, p. 227). For Seneca's speculation on che imaginary Civil War epic poem with Cato as a central heroic character, see above, eh. 1, section 7. Contrary co Sullivan ( 1968), 97 ff; Dickens' Our Mutual Friend, for instance, does not cease co be a realistic novel despite the wildly implausible plot. Neither what the same scholar calls "denigration of the real" (ibid., 104 ff), nor che fact that "there is not a single admirable character in the work" (105) plays against the realistic dimension of the Satyricon: after all, such an eminent example of the realistic novel as Pere Goriot does not possess a single admirable character either; the chapter on Petronius in Erich Auerbach's classic Mimesis (1953), 20 ff, still illuminates much of the problem; cf. also Maiuri (1962). Gill ( 1973), 184 f., questions whether che claim of "realism" in the apostrophe is serious, suggesting chat it may parody che poetic "statement of intention'' found e.g. in Hor. Epist., 1, I, 1 tI, or Ovid Am., 1, 1. For the purpose of my analysis this is irrelevant (cf above on the possibility of the ironic residue in the apostrophe). What matters is chat the apostrophe's "realistic" statement is consistent with the tenor and style of the Satyricon. Jones ( 1991) offers a stimulating discussion of the Satyricon in terms of "ancient concepts which overlap with or are related to our own ideas of realism as literary characteristic" (105). His conclusion is that "Petronius virtually revokes the satiric polemic of realism according to which one genre is seen as privileged at the expense of others" and that on the surface his narrative "seems to comply with the ancient concept of verisimilitude, bur ... the use of enargeia allows a radical subjectivism; in terms of decorum we are allowed co see that the characters in the story are deluded, but no other approach is positively legitimized, unless it is Petronius' own polytonal irony and distancing" (118). In contrast, Pinna ( I 987-88), 102 f., holds that even though satire, parody, and irony employed by Petronius "possano discorcere i concorni della realta da cui egli prende le mosse, questa sressa realra appare, nel romanzo, a rutto condo." One must still, however, recognize Petronius' virtuosity in imitating the Latin idiom of middle and low social status as a prominent and innovative feature of his art. Note also 2, 2: Levibus enirn atque inanibus sonis fudibria quaedam excitando ejfecistis ut corpus orationis enervaretur et caderet, and 6: Grandis et ut ita dicarn pudica oratio non est maculosa nee turgida, sed naturali pulchritudine e:x:;urgit.For the view of Petronius' style as traditional "Atticism," cf. e.g. Sullivan (I 968), 81 ff., 161 ff, 208; Zeitlin (1971a), 76. Cf. Bakhtin (1984), 114 ff Contra Sullivan (1968), 262, novus was a very strong word in Latin: cf. res novae- an idiom for revolution. That Petronius' "simplicity," however, is not at all "simple," cf. Rankin ( 197 I), I 07; ibid. on the conceivable esthetic reaction co icon the part of his imagined "Ca cones.'' Thus Encolpius comments on the disgusting recital of Virgil by Habinnas' slaveboy (68, 6): ut tune primurn me etiam Vergilius ojfenderit:, and Eumolpus, in his discourse on poetry, lists amongs rhe model.-. to be imitated Romanusque Vergilius

341

NOTES

112

113

114

115

116

TO CHAPTER

3. PP. 221-22

et Horatii curiosafelicitas ( I 18, 5); Horace could well have been closer to Petronius' heart, not only on esthetic grounds (cf. Sullivan (I 968), 27, 65 ff., 167), but rather owing to his hedonistic view of life. On the other hand, see the "socadic parody of Vergilian ideas" in the course of Encolpius' address to his phallus (132, 11 ): llla solo fixos oculos aversa tenebat,/ Nee magis incepto vu/tum sermone movetur! Quam lentae salices lassovepapavera co/lo; these lines are conflated from Aen., 6, 469, Eel., 5, 16, and Aen., 9, 436; cf. Rankin (1971), 48 (and notes). This entire "phallic" peroration is made "in Vergilian terms" (ter . .. ter . .. , cf. Aen., 2, 791 f.; 6, 700 f., corripui . .. bipennum; cf. correpta bipenni, Aen., 2, 479); cf. on this Courtney (1962), 99. Cf. Zeitlin (1971a), 71, on Virgilian allusions in the LychasTryphaena episode and 67 in the tale of the Ephesian widow. Fully developed by Sullivan (1968), 193 ff., 211 ff.; recapitulated id. (1985), 153 ff.; on Petronius and Seneca, cf. also Collignon (1892), 291 ff.; Faider (I 921); Paratore, l (1933); 124; Maiuri ( 1945), I 7 ff.; Rose (1971), 205 ff. See Sullivan (1985), 175, on the indirect stylistic and topical innuendoes intended ad hominem: "The intentions underlying such literary methods are not unfamiliar in ancient authors; they provide a typically Graeco-Roman pleasure in the recognition of allusions and further amusement from their radically different deployment." This seems to me the case with virtually all examples of Petronius' alleged parody (cf on the definition of parody, p. 192 above) of Seneca cited by Sullivan (I 968), 193 ff. (see also the bibliographical references in his footnotes, ibid., 195, 209 f): (a) Satyr., 100 and Epist., 73, 6, 8 - on the communality of all things - Seneca, however, does not mean love which Petronius does; (b) Satyr., 115 and a series of Seneca's passages (NQ, 2, 59; 4 pracf.; Marc., 10, 6; 11, 3, ff.; Pofyb., 9, 6, 7; Brev., 20, 5; Epist., 92, 34, 5; 99. 8 f.. _:,I); it is surprising chat Sullivan did not add to this list Prov. (6, 7 ff.) - Encolpius' lament over the body of Lichas (see on this, however, in greater detail, 251 f below); (c) Satyr. 88 and NQ, 7, 31; Epist., 115, 10 ff. - Eumolpus on cultural decline: see p. 203 and n. 57 above; (d) the last and most convincing reference, on the predicament of an outlaw, Satyr., 125, 4: quicquid meruerunt, semper exspectant, and Epist., 105, 7 f: dat poenas quisquis exspectat; quisquis atttem merttit t'.,:spectat- but srill, a parody effect cannot here be postulated: this is, after all, Encolpius' sober insight into the realities of his circumstances. For further passages from the novel chat Sullivan treats elswehere as examples of alleged parody of Seneca, see pp. 222 ff. below (and notes). Seneca was of course, a convenient subject for parody owing to the monotony and repetitiousness of his medium; bur the same can be claimed as regards his father, to say nothing of, presumably, the host of other philosophers and rhetoricians whose names we possess. One imagines char the work of Musonius Rufus or Annaeus Cornurus was no less dull owing to the limited range of the usable stock arguments. Williams ( 1978), 14; cf. Baldwin ( 1981 ), 136. Note the examples of loci communes on cultural decline discussed by Williams, op. cir., 6 ff., which in addition co Pecronius and Seneca include Sen. Rhee., Coritr., 1, preface; Veil. Pat., 1, 16, 17; Plin. NH, 14, 2 ff.; Tac. Dial. For the relatively full listing of these parallels see Delatte (1950); Rose ( 1971 ), 72, contends that he observed about eighty of such between the Satyricon and Epistulae Morales "chat catch che eye;" out of chem he lists nine which he considers more or less significant and of which, even in his own view, only one (on the equality of slaves and freeborn, Epist., 74, 1, 10 - Satyr., 70, 11 ff; cf. Sullivan (I 968), 133 ff.) appears "a definite echo" exploited by Pecronius "for comic effect;" of the other eight: (a) (Epist., 8, 8 - Satyr., 55, 5) is a case of Rose's misunderstanding: the word dissertus is applied by che two authors nor co one and the same but two different people; (6) and (c) rhe mock funeral of Pacuvius (Epist., 12, 8; Brev., 20, 3) and illiterate pretences of Calvisius Sabinus (both paralleled in Satyr., 52, 9; 78, 5 and

342

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3, P. 222

48, 4; 50, 5; cf. Sullivan ( 1968), 129 ff) are, at best, borrowings from, nor parodies or travesties ot~ Seneca, or merely a sign that both writers knew the two eccentric individuals in question and wrote of them independently from each other; (d) the mention of the astrologer Serapa in Satyr., 76 and the philosopher Serapio in Epist., 40, 2 are ro my mind entirely unrelated and refer to different personages; {e) the phrase de negotio deicere (Epist., 88, 44 and Satyr., 56, 7) means completely different things in the two contexts which can be linked only by an artificial effort; (f) the alleged resemblance of the "Eumolpian poetics" with Seneca's views on literature will be created elsewhere in extenso; (g) a rderence to heredipetae and crows (Epist., 94, 43 and Satyr., 124, 2) seems to me irrelevant. 117 E.g.: "Servi sunt." Immo homines. "Servi sunt." lmmo contubernales. "Servi sunt." lmmo humiles amici. "Servi sunt. "lmmo conservi. si cogitaveris tantundem in utrosque licerefortunae. !taque rideo istos, qui turpe existimant cum servo suo cenare. Quare, nisi quia superbissima consuetudo cenanti domino stantium servorum turbam circumdedit? Est ille plus quam capit, et ingenti aviditate onerat distentem ventrem ac desuetum iam ventris officio, ut maiore opera omnia egerat quam ingessit;at infelicibus servis movere labra ne in hoe quidem, ut loquantur. licet (Epist., 47, I ff); Vis tu cogitare istum, quern servum tuum vocas, ex isdem seminibus ortum eodem frui caelo, aeque spirare, aeque vivere, aeque mori.' tam tu ilium videre ingenuum potes quam ille te servum (ibid., 1O.); Haec tamen praecepti mei sum ma est: sic cum inferiore vivas, quemadmodum tecum superiorem vivere velis (ibid., 11 ); Vive cum servo clementer, comiter quoque, et in sermonem ille adrnitte et in consilium et in convictum. Hoe loco addamavit mihi dota manus delicatorum: "nihil hac re humilius, nihil turpius" (ibid., 13). Cf. Rose (1971), loc. cir.; Sullivan (1968), 47; idem (1985), 174; further on the episode, see Paratore, 2 (l 933), 249 L; Rankin ( 1971 ), 27, 81; Smith (1975), ad loc. For Seneca's humanitm see above, eh. 1, section 10. It seems perfectly plausible that Petronius drew on this epistle, or borrowed a few derails from Seneca's sketch of an archetypical glutton - such as concerns with digestion and defecation (cf. Satyr., 47) - which he reworked in creating the ambience of the Cena and the character of Trimalchio, as argued by Sullivan (1968), 135: thus, Trimalchio has a crowd of slaves attending his dinner, and much is made of the episode with the carver (36) and a carver slave is mentioned by Seneca in the letter under discussion as a sign of luxury: Alius pretiosas aves scindit; per pectus et dunes certis ductibus circumferens eruditam manum frustra excutit, info/ix, qui huic uni rei vivit, ut altilia decenter secet, Epist., 47, 6). On the other hand, all this could have been a familiar characteristic of the everyday routine among people of Trimalchio's social and financial status, observed, reproduced, and satirized by Petronius independently from any literary source. 118 E.g. fpist., 47, 17: Quare non est quodfastidiosi isti te deterreant, quo minus servis tuis hilarem te praestes et non superbe superiorem. As l suggested earlier, travesty tends to be double-edged, satirizing both its new and original context (and in this case of Trimalchio's "snobbism" it would mean that Perronius concurs in his criticism with Seneca). In fact, there are no compelling reasons to identify Petronius with this species of men whom Seneca attacks (as Sullivan (1968), 135, implicitly does), or to make him sympathize with their attitude and behavior. We must remember T acirus' portrayal of him as a person skillful in dissimulation and in reality differing from what he may have appeared (cf. section 2 above). ] 19 Cf. Sullivan ( 1968), 133, on T rimalchio's behavior towards slaves ''that would no doubt strike rhe average upper-class Roman as tasteless, and perhaps, senseless;" or, 135: "it is clear that his [Trimalchio's) behavior would not appeal to those members of Roman society whom Seneca describes as delicati and fostidiosi. The chaos and exhibition of bad taste that follow the seating of the slaves ar the dinner table (70 ff.) naturally reflects on the unsoundness of Seneca's advice and what to

343

NOTES

120

121

122

123

124 125 126

127

128

129

TO CHAPTER

5, PP. 222-25

Petronius would be che absurdity of his Stoic views on slavery." This entire line of reasoning seems co me flawed; first, the identification of Perronius' own views with those of the fastidiosi is not entirely obvious; second, in the Cena no lesser chaos and bad taste preceded the fraternization scene (e.g. the arrival of Habinnas and ics aftermath, 65 ff), and Encolpius repeatedly expresses his feelings of shame and disgust in the course of the dinner - once immediately before the fraternization scene (70, 8: Pudet rejerre quae secuntur) regarding the ointment applied by the boy-slaves on the guests' feet; ergo, there is no reason co regard the description of che ultimate havoc, as Sullivan alleges, to have been originated by Trimalchio's benevolence towards slaves (which is, in fact, wrong - the havoc was an outcome of Trimalchio's mock funeral) and intended by Petronius to refute Seneca's view on slavery; rhird, the question of Pecronius' audience and of contemporary attitudes towards slavery is more complex - see e.g Griffin (1976), 256 ff. Cf e.g. Sullivan (1968), 133 - bur in my opinion, this has nothing to do with Petronius' presumed Epicureanism (cf. p. 252 below) allegedly responsible for "his acceptance and preservation of the social hierarchy," ibid.; cf. idem (1985), 174. Cf. Rose (1971), 73: "he trots out in appalling Latin Seneca's high-minded reflections on the brotherhood of man.'' One of Seneca's chief points in Epist., 47 is that the fastidiosi creating their own slaves harshly and with contempt act subserviencly to the slaves of their superiors (e.g. 13: Hos ego eosdem deprehendam alienorum servorum osculantes manum; the same point is made by the story of Callistus and his former master, ibid., 9) - all this seems hardly applicable to chose whom Nero admitted to his personal and intimate companionship. See Rudich (1993), 49 ff., 275; cf also above, eh. 1, section I O where I argue that it it was with the views held by such traditionalists that Seneca chose to polemicize in the second book of che De Clementia by contrasting severitas and humanitas. 71, I f: Ad summam, omnes illos in testamento meo manu mitto. Phylagyro etiam fandum !ego et contubernalem suam, Carioni quoque insulam et vicesimam et lectum stratum. As regards the trial and sentencing of Pedanius Secundus' slaves, see Tac. Ann., l 4, 44: dissonae voces respondebant, cf. Rudich ( 1993), 53. On a similar problem in connection with Eumolpus' Bel/um Civile as an alleged parody of Lucan, see below, pp. 230, 232. Cf. MacMullen (I 966), 36 ff. Following Sullivan (1968), 212 f, 252 (and his footnote); idem (1985), 176 ff. Note Ann., 16, 18: nam illi dies per somnum, nox ofjiciis et oblectamentis vitae transigebatur; cf. also Tacicus' description of Petronius as eruditus luxu (ibid.) with Seneca's hoe est luxuriae propositum, Epist., 122, 5. Seneca refers to the personages who lived under Tiberius - Acilius Buta, Pinarius Na£Ca, and S. Papinius (Epist., 122, 10-16); cf Sullivan (1968), 213: "Seneca no doubt saw the danger of using the court quarry for his moral lessons and of recording for posterity, in hopefully permanent form, the sort of things that went on around Nero. He had no wish ro publish and perish." Cf. Epist. 122, 3: Et hi mortem timent, in quam se viZJicondiderunt? Tam infausti quam nocturnae aves sunt, ibid., 18: Causa tamen praecipua mihi videtur huius morbi vitae communis fastidium. Cf. Sullivan's ( 1968), 251 ff., observation chat about at least one half of che action in che Satyricon takes place in darkness and his related remarks on Petronius' penchant for scopophilia. Cf. contra naturam pugrwnt (Sen. Epist., 122, 5); vitae communis fastidium (ibid., 18) etc. Lefevre ( 1990) proposes co interpret Brev., 12, 5 as yet another critical reference by Seneca to the Arbiter, which I find coo general, however, to indicate a particular target (elegantia criticized by the philosopher must have been a catchword in the circles which both he and Petronius frequented). For Seneca's entanglement with the problem of the mos maiorum see above, eh. I.

344

NOTES

TO CHAPTER

3, PP. 225-26

130 Sullivan (1985), 177 ff. makes an ingenious attempt to argue that several epigrams from the Anthologia Latina (396, 410, 412, 416 R = Prato 6, 19, 21, 25), whose aurhorship he attributes to Seneca, are directed against Petronius (compare Prato [1964), Introduction, 1 ff., which discusses the matters of the epigrams' origin and arcriburion; note also on these poems Shackleton Bailey [ 1979], 57, who recognizes the possibility of Seneca's aurhorship). Be chat as it may, three our of four epigrams seem co me irrelevant: their contents and rhetoric are too familiar in the genre to allow a concrete judgment as to their individual target, if any. The exception is the poem (Ant. Lat., 412 R = Prato, 21 = 408-409 Shackleton Bailey), full of uncommon and unremitting bitterness, which may afford a potential for imaginatively construing it as Seneca's settlement of his accounts with the Arbiter: Carmina mortifero tua sunt sujfusa veneno.l At sunt carminibus pectora nigra magis.l Nemo tuos fagiet, non vir, non femina, dentes;/ [h Jaut puer [h}, aut aetas undique tuta senis.l Utque farens totas inmittit saxa per urbes.l In populum sic tu verba maligna iacis.l Sed solet insanos populus conpesceresanus/ Et repetunt notum saxa remissa caput.l In te nunc stringit nullus non carmina uatesl lnque tuam rabiem publica Musa farit.l Dum sua conpositus nondum bene concutit annal Miles, it e nostra lancea torta manu./ Bellus homo es? Va/de. Capitalia crimirza ludisl Deque tuis marzant atra venena iocis./ "Sed tu per[que] iocum dicis uinumque:" quid ad rem/ Si pforem, risus si tuus ista focit?! Quare tolle iocos: non est iocus esse malignum.l Numquam sunt grati, qui nocuere, sales. Proceeding from the assumption (see above, section 2) char the Arbiter's cognomen was Niger (cf 2: pectora nigra; 14: atra venena iocis), Sullivan offers a witty interpretation of much in the epigram's vocabulary as jabs at him. Screeched to the utmost, the argument may even suggest a reference to the Satyricon (and it would imply chat the novel was some sort of roman-a-clef - cf. section 7 below) in the complaint about poison imparted from the tongue of an anonymous detractor and affecting literally everyone, age or sex notwithstanding: in the novel we encounter a spectrum of grotesque characters, from the boy Giron to the old man Eumolpus, and the whole parade of monstrous women. The censure of "wine and jokes" seems appropriate in the attack on the one who would joke and drink wine on his very deathbed, and a dark him of "deadly criminal games" could have been either a comment on the practice of risky dissimulation Petronius was conducting at the court, simultaneously flattering the emperor and taunting him - cf section 2 above. Even though each of Sullivan's arguments is decidedly inconclusive, their cumulative effect is of some import and seems consistent with the balance of probabilities - common sense suggests that there was no love lost between the old philosopher and the man who replaced him not only in Nero's favor, but also, to some extent, in the capacity of his mentor. 131 On the TroiaeHalosis, see e.g. Paratore, 2 (1933), 294 ff.; Walsh (1970), 47 f.; Rankin (1971), 38; Zeitlin (1971a); Puccioni (1973); Cervellera (1975); Capponi ( 1990). Some essential arguments for it parodying Senecan tragedy are summarized by Sullivan (1968), 186 ff.; cf Neraudau (1985), 2036; for a fuller discussion see Castorina (1971). I 32 On Yirgilian echoes in the Troiae Halosis, see Sullivan (1968), 187; Castorina (1971), 111 ff.; cf. Stubbe (1933), 31 ff As regards Seneca's tragic verse, Sullivan for the purpose of comparative illustration adduces Eurybates' lengthy description of the catastrophe that overtook the Greek Aeet from his Agamemnon (406-578), a passage almost three rimes longer than the Troiae Halosis, I would rather select Hecuba's monologue from the Prologue co the Troades (1-66), only one line longer chan the entire Troiae Halosis-,it is much closer to Eumolpus' poem in content (which would have allowed both the author and the reader co play with ironic evocation added co parody - cf. section 3 above), and it is also delivered by a Trojan survivor. On Seneca's senarii Graecanici, cf. Sullivan (1968), I 87. Note, in

345

NOTES

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3, PP. 226-28

particular, his observation on Eumolpus' "vignette" on the death of Laocoon and Seneca's taste for gory detail (Sullivan cites the death of Hippolytus scene in Phaedra; the few lines on the death of Priam from Hecuba's monologue I earlier referred to would offer an even more succinct parallel: Tr. Hal., vv. 49-52:

133

134 135

136

lnvadunt viruml lam nwrte pasti membraque ad terram trahunt.l lacet sacerdos inter aras victimal Terramque plangir, cf. Sen., Troad, 46-50.: Cum Jerox, scaeva manul Coma reflectens regium torta caput,/ Alto nefandum vulneri ferrum abdidit;/ Quod penitus actum cum recepissetlibens,I Ensis senili siccus e iugulo redit. Further, cf. the same scholar's observations on the frequency in both texts - Tr. Hal. and the passage from Seneca's Agamemnon he chose for illustrative purposes - of the words that are repeated in one form or another at the ends of lines. The same holds true for Hecuba's monologue from Seneca's Troades-.Sullivan's examples from Tr. Hal.: metus!metu (1, 3); manuslmanum (21, 23); mare/mare (29, 33); merolmero (62, 56); iubaeliubas (38, 60); iubarliubar (39, 54); compare with Troad., Prol.: diem/dies (10, 21); sibilsibi(14, 25); manuslmanu (18, 46); ma/a/ma/um (35, 43); metuslmetus (36, 62). That Troiae Halosis is not an ekphrasis is pointed out by Slater ( 1990), 96 ff. Cf. Sullivan (1968), 188: "Pecronius ... exercises his poetic versatility by imitating Seneca's technique and offering a pastiche of his language." Seneca-like sententiae are nor, however, entirely absent in Eumolpus - cf e.g. Tr. Hal., vv. 62 ff: Hie graves alius merol Obtruncat et continuat in mortem ultimaml Somnos. Cf. in this connection Seneca's argument in the De Vita Beata - above, eh. 1, section 12. I owe this suggestion co Thomas Cole. Bardon ( 1968), 246, makes a strong statement to the effect that "la Troiae Halosis de Petrone est un corrigee des Troira;" cf. Rankin (1971), 38, n. 34: "It is surely consonant with che apparent rather than genuine character of Petronius' simplicity char he should sail close to the wind by essaying a satire on a theme treated by Nero." Rose ( 1971 ), 75, argues against any relationship of the two. Following Bardon (1968), 208 f., I believe Nero's Halosis !/ii co have been identical with his Troica, or a part of ir. For the emperor's epic, see Cizek (1972), 391 ff., and Neraudau (1985), 2042 ff.: according ro rhe former, Nero's Troica "constiruaienc une replique arcistique a l'epopee de Lucain" (392); and in the view of the latter, Eumolpus' Troiae Halosis may have had with Lucan's Iliacon "le meme rapport qu'enrrerienr !'episode de la guerre civile, inrercale clans le roman, avec 'la Pharsale"' (2036 f.) - which position was earlier disproved by Srubbe (I 933), 30; cf. Sullivan (1968), 189, whose point (ibid.) that Eumolpus makes no subsranrial description of rhe fire of Troy which is presumed to have been a centerpiece of Nero's epic, seems co me irrelevant. Nore Zeidin's (1971a), 58 ff., argument on froiae Halosis as an intentional subversion of Virgil's Aeneid. On the relationship of Eumolpus and Lucan's Bel/um Civile, see e.g. Paratore, 2 (1933), 385 ff.; Sochatoff(1962); Tandoi (1967); Sullivan (1968), 170 ff.; cf. idem (1982); Walsh (1970), 48 ff.; Zeiclin (1971a); Luck (1972); Pellegrino (1972); George (1974); Burck (1979), 200 ff; most recently, Fancham (1992), 228 f.; also in the commented edition of the mini-epic by Guido {1976), passim. The theory chat Petronius preceded Lucan is Grimal's (1977), cf its critique by Puccioni ( 1979). For a succinct review of much of the earlier scholarship on the topic see Socharoff (1962), 449 ff. Note, in particular, Haussler's, 2 (1978), 111 ff., thorough discussion. Although his belief that Pecronius actually wrote in sympathy with Lucan (146) goes too far, he is correct in pointing out certain common sensibilities of the rwo authors, "wenigstens in der Negation" (139). Among other treatments of the problem, one encounters Heitland's view (Haskins' edition of Lucan (1887), Intro., p. xxxvi) that Petronius' piece was "ch rown off half in rivalry,

346

NOTES

137

138

139

140

141

142

TO CHAPTER

3, PP. 228-31

half in imitation of Lucan;" it is seen as a deliberate apology for Caesar by Kindt (1892); as having no significance in Petronius' scheme by de Boisjoslin (1902); as a defense of Lucan by means of attacking traditionalists by Plessis (1909); Walsh's (1968) opinion making Eumolpus himself a chief object of satire is closer to my own (seep. 232 below); cf. Slater's ( 1990), 192 ff., witty suggestion that Eumolpus may have been intended to exemplify the figure of "mad poet" from Horace's Ars Poetica(453 ff.) as interpreted by Frischer (1991). For Lucan as a target of parody and criticism, cf. e.g. Sage (1915); Sullivan (1985), 161 ff.; Rose ( 1971 ), 61 ff.; for Lucan as a subject of instruction - Baldwin ( 1911 ); Socharoff (1962); Zeitlin (1971 a); for the common source of the two texts George ( 1974). On the discourse of Eumolpus, cf. e.g. Stampini (1920); Paratore, 2 (1933). 380 ff.; Wilkinson (1946-47}; Stark (1964); Sullivan (1968), 165 ff, 182 ff; Walsh (I 970), 48; Guido (1976), 335 ff. and ad loc.; and Feeney (1991), 262 ff. See on Hor. Sat., 2, 8 as the model for the Cena, among others, Sullivan (I 968), 126. Collignon ( 1892), 229 ff. is still the best compendium of the evidence on Petronius' relationship with Greek and Latin literature. For the travesty of the Odyssey,cf. ibid., 316 ff.; cf. also Cameron (1970); Fedeli (1981), 97 ff.; for that of the Symposium, e.g. Courtney (1962), 96; Cameron (1969); note Zeitlin (1971a), 71, on the assimilation of Croton to the underworld. For Perronius' parody of Ovid, see pp. 213 f. above, in connection with Oenothea; cf. Satyr., 115 which, according to Courtney (1962), 98, could be reported directly in Ovid's words (Met., 11, 719 ff}; compare also Encolpius' impotence and Ovid Am., 3, 7. On the political significance of the Ovidian echoes, Zeitlin (1971 a), 72 f. As regards Perronius and Virgil, cf. pp. 232, 234, 237 below. For Encolpius as a travesty of Aeneas see, in detail, Zeitlin (I971a), 58 ff {"the parallel between the two, as so ofren in Petronius, depends not so much upon verbal coincidence as upon a striking resemblance of the sequence of thought and action," and a series of illustrations follows, including the storm scene and the characters' arrival in Croton that "most closely resembles the arrival of Aeneas in Carthage," 72). If it is retained as a correct reading, the quote from Hor. Carm., 3, 1, 1 (odi profanum vulgus et arceo)may, in principle, be taken for a sign of irony, or self-irony, on Petronius' part. Beck ( 1979), 253, believes that "Eumolpus is drawn as a poet trapped into mediocrity by the tenets of his own aesthetic theory which effectively divorces his poetry from both his own experience and from his own real feelings, insights and moral outlook." On the other hand, following Frischer's ( 1991) ingenious interpretation of Horace's Ars Poeticaas a parody of the "scholastic" literary criticism, one may take Eumolpus' discourse for a travesty of the same subject. Cf. Courtney's (1962), 100, comment on Petronius' genius "which for breadth and audacity has no parallel in ancient literature and which completely overrides the extremely formal canons of ancient literary theory." Cf. Sullivan (1968) ff.; idem (1985), 164; Rose (1971), 61 ff.; they read the first sentence of Eumolpus' oration emended as multos iuvenes carmen decepit, for the defense of the manuscript reading that I adopted, see George (1974), 121; Grima! (1977), 2 f. As e.g. George (I 974), 132: "It is therefore at least reasonable to proceed on the assumption that the Pharsaliais not simply largely irrelevant to the composition of the Bellum Civile, but entirely so." For lists of parallels see the still valuable commentaries by Baldwin (1911) and Stubbe ( I 933); more judiciously chosen, in Rose (1971 ), 87 ff: he cites 152 possibleechoes, but of which only 28 are taken as probable-,cf. also G rimal (I 977), 261 ff. George (197 4) makes a valiant attempt to refute Rose's entire list, and in most cases, although not all of them, seems to have succeeded. At the same time, I find at least four of his refutations unconvincing

347

NOTES

143

144

145

146

147

TO CHAPTER

3, PP. 231-32

(entries (a), (d), (k), and (s), respectively, Perr., I ff. and Luc., I, 109 ff.; Peer., 36 and Luc., 2,585,715; Petr., 112 and Luc. 1,569 ff.; Petr., 215 f and Luc., 7, 179 f.) while he himself admits that in two others (entries (h) and (t), respectively, Petr., 65 f. and Luc., 6, 816 f.; Petr., 224 f. and Luc., 5, 30 f.) the parallel is "the closest available" (130). Given the brevity of Eumolpus' piece, these six cases are, in my opinion, sufficient co reject the theory of Lucan's total irrelevance to Petronius. In addition, George wholly disregards the compelling force of the subject matter, the same for both works, while his argument that both Petronius and Lucan could have "borrowed a little from the quantities of posc-Virgilian historical epic which are no longer extant" ( 130) is undemonstrable and speculative by his own admission (ibid.). Cf. 118, 3: neque concipere aut ederepartum mens potest nisi ingenti flumine !iterarum inundata, and 5: Praeterea curandum est, ne sententiae emineant extra corpus orationis expressae,sed intexto vestibus co/ore niteant, cf. Quintilian's critique of Seneca ( 10, I, 130) and his comment on Lucan: sententiis clarissimus ( I 0, I, 90). Cf. 118, 6: Non enim res gestae versibus comprehendendae sunt, quod longe melius historici faciunt, sed per ambages deorumque ministeria et fabulosum sententiarum tormentum praecipitandus est liber spiritus; on the gods in Lucan's Bellum Civile, see above, eh. 2; also, Feeney (I 991), 269 ff. Other epics - that is, Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica, Statius' Thebaid and Achilleid, Silius ltalicus' Punica- all employ the divine machinery of Virgil's kind. The last author, although his epic was a produce of his old age, had in fact been Lucan's elder contemporary, born in AD 29. Of Eumolpus' clumsy sententiae observe e.g. v. 24: Quaerit se natura nee invenit, 56 f.: detritaque commoda luxul Vulneribus reparantur, 86: censum in damna furentem; 93: dum vanos lapis invenit usus; 162: vincendo certior exul; 167 L nee hanc sine vindice dextram/ Vinciet ignavus; 220: Qui temptare ve!itfatisque iubentibus uti ere. Petr., w. 100 f.: Haec ubi dicta dedit, dextrae coniungere dextram/ Conatus rupto tel!urem solvit hiatu. Note George (197 4), 130: "[it] is scarcely good enough to rank as a serious challenge to the Pharsalia". As regards the rest of Pecronius' poetry, cf. George (I 974), loc. cir., and Musurillo's ( 196 l) 159 ff., convincing argument for the high quality and sophistication in some of ir. On the possible function of the verse parts in the original text of the novel, see n. 34 above. Ct: George (1974), 119: "the intensity of its badness is not as great as one would expect in pure parody ... although there are prima facie reasons for supposing that Petronius from time to time imitates Lucan, the supposed imitations are not continuous or coherent; nor do they seize on Lucan 's worse and most notable lines." Some find metrical similarities in the two works (the use of syntactic break at the strong caesura in the third or fourth foot of the hexameter - cf. Walsh [ I 968], 49) which is, however, far too tenuous a point co argue for their dependance, and it provides even less reason to regard the one as the other's parody: the device was by no means uncommon in the poetry of the times - George (1974), 131 f., cites Ovid and Statius. George's (l 974) sober analysis leaves very lircle in che traditional lists of Lucan-Eumolpus verbal parallels; most of them are easily, and convincingly, traced co the earlier authors, largely Virgil and Ovid. He considers only two out of the twenty-four most representative passages relatively telling ro assume interdependence: (a) (George, 128) Petr., w. 224 f.: debellatique Quirites/ Rumoris sonitu maerentia tecta relinquunt and Luc., 5, 30 f.: Maerentia tectal Caesar habet (cf. Stubbe, ad loc; Grima!, ad loc.); and (b) (George, 125) on the dispersion of the ashes of the triumvirs across three countries (Petr., vv. 65 f. and Luc., 6, 816 f.) - this last, however, constitutes not verbal but thematic similarity. In addition, I accept four more parallel cases for which George's refutation seems to me not sufficiently persuasive: (a) Petr., v. 2: Qua mare, qua terrae, qua sidus currit utrumque and Luc., 1, 110: Quae mare, quae terras, quae

348

NOTES

TO CHAPTER

3, P. 232

totum continet orbem (Baldwin (1911), ad loc.; Stubbe (1933), ad loc.; Grima! (1972), ad loc.; Rose (1971), 88; cf., however, Virg. Aen. 1, 236: Qui mare, qui terras omni dicione tenerent- George, 123); (b) Petr., vv. 36 f.: lam Phasidos undal Orbata est and Luc., 2, 585: Hine me victorem ge!idas ad Phasidos undas (also 2, 715: Ut, Pagasaea ratis peteret cum Phasidos undas - Baldwin (191 I), ad loc.; Stubbe (1933), ad loc., Grima! (1972), ad Joe.; Rose (1971), 89; cf., however, Ovid Met., 7, 7 quoted by George, 124); (c) Peer., v. 113: lam fragor armorum trepidantes personat aures and Luc., 1, 569 f: Tum fragor armorum magnaque per aera vocesl Auditae (Baldwin, ad lac. arguing against the exclusion of this line by some editors; Stubbe, ad loc.; Rose, 90; cf. George, 126); (d) Perr., v. 216: Ante ocu!os vo!itant and Luc., 7, 180: Ante ocu!os vo!itare suos. On the grounds of these examples it appears chat Petronius was familiar with most of Lucan's epic written after Nero's ban. He may have obtained it, "samizdat"-like, in circu!is et conviviis - cf. Haussler (1978), 2,410. Rose (1971), 65 ff., argues for deliberate parallels in Eumolpus' and Lucan's endings: Petr., vv. 293 ff.: Nescis tu, Magne, tueri/ Romanas arces?Epidamni moenia quaerel Thessa!icosquesinus humano sanguine tingue and Luc., 10, 545 f.: Ad campos, Epidamne, tuos, ubi so/us apertisl Obsedit muris ca!cantem moenia Magnum; cf 7, 473: Primaque Thessaliam Romano sanguine tinxit). Furthermore, this alleged parallel serves him as crucial for his dating of the Satyricon to the very last months of Petronius' life, which is hardly probable. Rose's allegation is convincingly refuted by George (1974), 129 f.: "sanguine with a part of tingo occurs some seventeen times in Ovid, and four times in final position; and the use of the same proper names may reasonably be attributed to the exigencies of the subject-matter. Epidamnus is simply the poetic version of the rather intractable Dyrrhachium, to which Pompeius whose cognomen was Magnus, did retreat at the outset of the war. And the final mention of Thessaly is natural enough, since the battle of Pharsalus is the obvious climax of any epic on this theme." Quite recencly, Connors (1994), 225 ff., resuscitated Rose's argument as a starting point for her discussion (as she solemnly phrased it) of "a Roman discourse of authorship and death" (227) which is, to my mind, wholly unpersuasive. There is no reason to assume that Epidamni moenia in Petr., v. 293 plays up co Luc., 10,541 (the penultimate line in the extant text) where occurs a sudden revival of Scaeva, mutilated at Dyrrachium in Luc. 6, 214-62 (see above, eh. 2, section 5), and even less reason to conclude that Eumolpus' lines 292-94 "encompass all of Lucan's poem, allusively extending from Pompey's escape from Italy, on to the campagn at Pharsalus, Pompey's flight from Caesar after the battle, and finally, Caesar's memory, at the noticeably abrupt end of Lucan's Be/Lum Civi!e, or of Pompey's failure to win decisively at Epidamnus." (Note that Eumolpus places Dyrrachium before Pharsalus, which is chronologically correct, but it speaks against any intentional allusion to Scaeva at the end of Lucan's BC; lastly, one finds in those lines no allusion co Pompey's subsequenr murder or to the events described in Lucan's last two books - Cato's African expedition and Caesar's activities in Alexandria where the author makes Scaeva reappear.) 148 As regards Eumolpus and Virgil, there are discernable at lease seven close verbal echoes, some of chem verbatim: (a) Petr., v. 9: Aes Ephyreiacum and Virg., Georg., 2, 463: Ephyreiaque aera (Stubbe (1933), ad loc.; Grima! (1972), ad loc.); (b) Petr., v. 100: Haec ubi dicta dedit,/ Dextras coniungere dextras which is composed almost verbatim from Virgil's two half-lines (Baldwin (1911), ad loc.; Stubbe, ad loc.; Grima!, ad loc.): haec ubi dicta dedit (Aen., 2, 790) and dextrae coniungere dextram (Aen., 2, 790); (c) Petr., v. 122: cum fu!gure rupta coruscoand Virg. Aen., 8, 391 f.: tonitru cum rupta corusco/ lgnea rima micans (Stubbe, ad loc.; Grima!, ad loc.); (d) Petr., v. 222 = Virg., Aen., 1, 111: miserabi!e visu (Baldwin, ad loc.; Stubbe, ad loc.; Grima!, ad loc.); (e) Petr., v. 253: maerens !acera Concordia pal/a (cf. ibid., 271:

349

NOTES TO CHAPTER

149

150 151 152

I 53

154

155

.1, PP. B2-34

scisso Discordia crine) and Virg. Aen., 8, 712: et Scissa gaudens vtidit Discordia paffa (Baldwin, ad loc.; Stubbe, ad loc.; Grima!, ad loc.); (f) Petr., v. 269: Cylfenia profes = Virg. Aen., 4, 258 (Baldwin, ad loc.; Stubbe, ad loc.; Grima!, ad loc.); (g) Petr., v. 274: scabra rubigine dentes and Virg. Georg. 1, 476: scabra robigine pila (Baldwin, ad loc.; Stubbe, ad loc.; Grima!, ad loc.). Cf Castorina (1971 ), I 09 f.: "In definitiva, l'analisi del Bel/um Civile petroniano mostra come la Pharsalia sia stata tenuta presenre nell'argomento e in qualche passo panicolare, e come ii principale modello sia st.uo Virgilio, ma mostra anche che non v'e alcuna caricatura o parodia di Lucano, dato che i pochissimi tratti 'comici' o 'grotteschi' riguardano semmai ... la mitologia tradizionale." For the view that Eumolpus' impetus parodies contemporary Virgilian epigones, cf George (1974), 132 and Hutchinson (1982). Cf Perr., vv. 177-208; in Lucan, only one line: lam gelidas Caesar cursu superaverat Alpes (I, 183). Caesar's speech, on the other hand, as rendered by Eumolpus (vv. 156-76), echoes two of Caesar's speeches in Lucan (1, 195-203; 299-351). For the Rubicon, see only in Lucan ( 1, 185-227), while the latter's lengthy portrayal of rhe First Triumvirate (I, 98-157) is reduced by Eumolpus to only a few lines (vv. 61-66). For the list of parallel derails in Eumolpus and Lucan, see Rose ( 1971 ), 87. Thematically certain actions and deliberations of Eumolpus' deities echo at rimes Lucan 's descriptions of portents or prodigies and prophecies (cf Perr., vv. 126-40 and Luc., I, 522-83; Perr., vv. 111-15 and Luc., 1, 679-94; cf the motif of an earthquake, Petr., vv. 264-66 and Luc., I, 45-66); note also Lucan's discourse on the Civil War as the consequence of Rome's weight and greatness leading to the cosmic collapse (1, 67-97, in particular 70 ff.: lnvida jatorum series summisque negatuml Stare diu nimioque graves sub pondere lapsusl Neese Roma ferens, echoed both in Eumolpus' exordium (vv. 1-7: Orbem iam totum victor habebat etc.) and in rhe words of Dis to Fortune (vv. 79-86, esp. 82 f.: Ecquid Romano sentis te pondere victam.l Nee posse ufterius perituram extol/ere molem?). Cf. only two half lines in Lucan: cultus gestare decoros/ Vix nuribus rapuere mares (I, 164 f). Cf. again only two halflines in Lucan: mensasque priores/ Aspernata fames (1, 163 f.). On this passage, cf. Tandoi ( I 967). I use the ingenious translations from Eumolpus by the late William Arrowsmith who, however, somewhat improved upon the original. Zeitlin ( 1971 a). Note the list of Eumolpus · parallels with and allusions to Virgil in terms of themes and imagery, ibid., 76 ff.; cf. also Baldwin ( 1911) and Collignon ( 1892). Most significant of them are: (a) Perr., vv. 76-121 (Dis and Fortuna) and Aen., 7, 286-340 Ouno and Allecto); cf. Perr., vv. 79-80 (spoken by Dis in Hades) and Aen., 10, 18-19 (spoken by Venus on Olympus); (b) Petr., vv. 158-59 (Caesar's words) and Aen., 6, 460-63 (Aeneas'); cf Georg., 2, 170-76; (c) Petr., vv. 210-12 and Aen., 4, 184-87 (Fama); cf. Allecro in Aen., 7, 511-18; (d) Petr., vv. 249-60 and Aen., 6, 273-81 (the catalogue of demons); (e) Petr., vv. 258-60 and Aen., I, 294-96 (Furor; jailed in the former instance, and bursting out of chains in the latter); (r) Petr., vv. 271-77 and Aen., 6, 280-81 (Discordia); cf. Aen. 8, 702. Zeitlin (1971a), 76, 78, correctly points out the reversal in most cases of Virgil's original meaning by Eumolpus and concludes: "Perronius concentrates on the negative aspects of Vergil's work and thereby offers a subversive antithesis of Vergil's work" (79). Cf Luc, I, 175 ff: Plus patria potuisse sua, mensuraque iuris/ Vis erat; hinc leges et plebis scita coactael Et cum consulibus turbantes iura tribuni;/ Hine rapti fosces pretio sectorque favorisl lpse sui populus fetafisque ambitus Urbil Annua venali referens certamina Campo. Some editors, following Broukhusius, delete line 47. In contrast, Lucan's first book

350

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156 157

158

159

160

16 I

162

3. PP. 234-38

mentions Cato only once, in the famous Victrix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni (I, 128). Nate that Cato is identified by Eumolpus with potestas and decits, and not with libertas as in Lucan. An accurate, although probably involuntary, description of the mental "schizophrenia" characteristic of che dissident dissimulatio. Cf. Luc., 1, 495 ff.: sic turba per urbem/ Praecipiti lymphata gradu, velut unica rebus! Spes foret adflictis patrios excedere muros,/ Inconsulta ruit; ibid., I, 504 ff.: Nullum iam languidus aevo/ Evaluit revocare parens coniunxve marituml Fletibus, aut patrii, dubiae dum vota salutisl Conciperent, tenuere fares; nee limine quisquam/ Haesit, et extremo tune forsitan urbis amatae/ Plenus abit visu; ruit inrevocabile vulgus. In Eumolpus che flight of people from Rome is paralleled, with inadvertent comic effect, by a flight of just divinities from the earth (vv. 246-53). In contrast, Lucan devotes only two lines to Pompey's flight from Italy (Danda ta men venia est tantorum, danda pavorum:I Pompeio fugiente timent, I, 521 f.) bur instead castigates the Senate (sed curia et ipsi/ Sedibus exiluere patres, invisaque bell,/ C'onsulibusfugiens mandat decreta senatus, I, 487 ff.) On Lucan and Pompey, see above, eh. 2, section 8; cf. also Rudich ( 1993), 91 ff. Cf. Caesar in Luc., 1, 150: gaudensque viam fecisse ruina; it is true char his Victrix causa deis placuit (ibid., 128), but in Lucan's world gods are at best indifferent, and ac worst hostile co human welfare, cf. on this above, eh. 2, section 9. Note v. 65: ingratam . .. Romam; in fact, che mini-epic yields the interpretation of Caesar as Rome's benefactor: the Civil War may have been needed to awake the national conscience: cf vv. 56 ff.: Arma placent miseris, detritaque commoda luxu/ Vulneribus reparantur ... Hoe mersam caeno Romam somnoque iacenteml Quae poterant tll"tes sana ratione movere,/ Ni Juror et bellum ferroque excita libido? Caesar is addressed as dive (v. 290 - bur, characteristically, by Discordia, which allows a subtle ambiguity) against Lucan 's numerous attacks at the practice of Imperial deification (above, eh. 2, section 7). On the symbolic meaning of the gigantomarhia in Augustan poetry, cf. Prop. 3, 1 I, 37; Hor. Carm., 3, 4, 53-79; Ovid Tr., 2, 67 ff.; in post-Augustan poetry, cf. Mart., 8, 49 [50]; Sil. ltal., I 7, 649 ff; cf. e.g. Speyer (1978), 1247 ff, esp. 1254 f.; and Feeney (1991), 297 f. Eumolpus' reference to the Actian battle fought under the auspices of Apollo (v. 115: Actiacosque sinus et Apollinis arma) may read as another sign of his loyalty to the regime. In Lucan Hercules is firmly associated with Cato (et~ e.g. his battle with snakes in Bk 9). Eumolpus makes the matter of divine partisanship singularly confosed: Hercules is linked ro Caesar (v. I 46) and to Pompey (v. 270), and so is Apollo (vv. 181 f and 269). Cf. Walsh's (1970), 45, observation that T ryphaena's appeal in verse for peace negotiations on board ship - Quis Juror, excfamat, pacem ronvertit in arma? ( l 08, 14) - ironically echoes the opening of Lucan's Bel/um Civile. Quisfuror, o ci11esetc. (I' 8 ff.). One extreme is represented by Ratti (1978), 137 ff., whose argument verges on the esoteric and claims to decode political meaning even in Trimalchio's hilariously messy astrology (39). A moderate position is exemplified by Walsh (I 970), 128 ff, 138 f. The editions and commentaries of the Cena are numerous; note Friedlander (1906); Maiuri (1945); Sedgwick (1925) and, especially, Smith (1975). Nore Zeitlin ( 1971 b), 659 ff., for che view of the Cena as "a microcosm of the world of the Satyricon" (665). See the fullest list (over ninety items) of modern scholars' alleged allusions co Nero in Rose ( 1971), Appendix A; cf. ibid., 77 ff., Rose's own smaller and judicious selection (about fifteen items). The name "Trimalchio" seems to be Semitic: et~ che list of Malchios and Maleh uses found in inscriptions in Bagnani ( 19546), 79 ff. According to Priuli ( 1975), 35, however, 'Trimalcio e sicuramente un invenzione di Petronio." On the ambiguity of Trimalchio's character, see e.g. Fedeli (1989),

351

NOTES

TO CHAPTER

3, PP. 238-.19

358; on his instability, Zeitlin (1971 b), 660. For him as a social type note Yeyne (1961); cf. Sullivan (1968), 58 f., 151 ff.; Walsh (1970), 109 ff.; Rankin (1971),

24 ff 163 Rose's ( 1971 }, 79, judgment: "It is our of the question that Perronius intends his satiric portrait of Trimalchio to satirize Nero" (Rose's emphasis) - although basically correct, needs however a series of qualifications (see below). The Arbiter's contemporary reader, cynically inclined, could have sought, one imagines, for real life prototypes among the novel's personages - d~ Yerdiere ( 1956), arguing that Tryphaena was modeled on Junia Silana, and Bagniani's (19546) contention that T rimalchio was a historical figure, a former slave of Petronius' own family. All this remains, however, but a series of speculations, and I find reasonable Walsh's ( 1970), 133, 140, assumption that the characters in the Satyricon represent rhe synthesis "of the literary and observed." On the possible literary sources for Trimalchio, particularly Seneca, e.g. Calvisius Sabinus in Epist., 27, 5 or Pacuvius (ibid., 12, 8) cf. op. cir. 133 ff. 164 60, 1: nam repente lacunaria sonare coeperunt totumque triclinium intremuit . .. ; ibid., 3: Ecce autem diductis lacunaribus subito circulus ingens, de cupa videlicet grandi excussus, demittitur, cuius per totum orbem coronae aureae cum alabastris unguenti pendebant. Walsh (1970), 1 I 7, argued that Trimalchio's domus is depicted as no more pretentious "than the normal run at Pompeii or Herculaneum," bur Fedeli ( 1981 ), 106, points out rhe mythological dimension of the house which is not characterized in any precise mode, implying the idea "di vaghezza e di tortuosira;" cf. on Trimalchio's house, Harsch ( 1935); Bagnani (19546). Note Starer's (1990), 62, observation that the freedman Diogenes' announcement (38, 10: C. Pompeius Diogenes . .. cenaculum locat; ipse enim domum emit) reminds one of Nero's response to his Golden House (Suer. Nero, 31 ); for the domus aurea tradition, see Morford (I 968); cf also Griffin (1984), 137 ff. In the course of the Cena, singing is repeatedly mentioned - cf. 31, 34, 35, 41, 64, 70. Note in particular 73, 3, where Trimalchio himself, while raking a bath, indulges in a poor imitation of the song by Menecrates who was Nero's favorire harpist (Suer. Nero, 30): lnvitatus balnei sono diduxit usque ad cameram os ebrium et coepit Menecratis cantica lacerare, sicut illi dicebant, qui linguam eius inte!fegebant. One may, on rhe other hand, point our that Trimalchio's excess in gluttony and passion for dice (32), might have been more immediately associated, in the eyes of Perronius' contemporaries, with Claudius rather than Nero (Suet. Cl., 33; cf Scramuzza ( 1940), 40). Nore also Rose's (1971 }, 79, apt observation rhar in so important a matter as factiones at the chariot races Nero's and Trimalchio's preferences differed. 165 This remains true as regards those details (all taken by modern scholars for Nerolike hints and allusions) which, to my own mind, bear a degree of plausibility, namely: (a) a statuette of Venus placed in Trimalchio's little shrine (29) - cf. Suet. Nero, 61 on Nero's attachment to a talisman-like female figurine; (b) the mention of Trimalchio's first beard preserved in a golden box (ibid.) - cf. Nero's staging a festival to celebrate his first shaving (Dio, 61, l 9, 1; also Suer. Nero, 12); (c) Trimalchio's sporting of a purple cloak (32) which may or may not have been an Imperial privilege; cf. his imitations of the rostra and of the emblems signifying imperium (30, 1): Et quod praecipue miratus sum, in postibus triclinii fasces erant cum securibus fixi, quorum unam partem quasi embolum navis aeneum finiebat, and also the description of Trimalchio's quasi-triumphal procession (28, 4 f.): Hine involutus coccina gausapa lecticae impositus est praecedentibus phaleratis cursoribus quattuor et chiramaxio, in quo deliciae eius vehebantur . .. Cum ergo auferretur, ad caput eius symphoniacus cum minimis tibiis accessit et tamquam in aurern aliquid secreto diceret, toto itinere cantavit (28); (d) the mention of a hydraulic organ (36) - Nero, according to Suetonius (Nero, 41, 54), was much interested in that

352

NOTES TO CHAPTER

166

167

168

169

3, PP. 239-40

instrument; (e) Trimalchio's guests kissing his golden (if one accepts Jahn's reading auream against the manuscript veram) image (60) - a gesture, appropriate in regard to the emperor?; (f)Trimalchio's penchant for puns (most of them awkward, cf. Satyr., 35, 36, 41, 56, 60) - possibly, a fashion at Nero's court (for Nero's own jokes see, e.g., Suer. Nero, 33); (g) Trimalchio's contempt for philosophy (71) - cf. Tac. Ann., 14, 16; Suer. Nero, 52; and (h) his involvement with astrology (76 f.) - Suet. Nero, 36, 40, 56; cf. Tac. Ann., 16, 14; Hist., I, 22. 48, 7: numquid duodecim aerumnas Herculis tenes, aut de Ulixe fabulam, quemadmodum illi Cyclopspollicem poricino extorsit? Solebam haec ego puer apud Homerum Legere,50, 5: Cum Ilium captum est, Hannibal, homo vafer et magnus stelio; 52, 1: quemadmodum Cassandra occidit jilios suos, et pueri mortui iacent sic ut vivere putes; ibid., 2: ubi Daedalus Niobam in equum Troianum includit; 59, 4 f.: Diomedes et Ganymedes duo Jratresfuerunt. Horum soror erat Helena. Agamemnon ii/am rapuit et Dianae cervam subiecit. !ta nunc Homeros dicit, quemadmodum inter se pugnent Troiani et Tarentini. Vicit scilicet et Iphigeniam, jiliam suam, Achilli dedit uxorem. Ob eam rem Aiax insanit. In much lesser, although still discernable measure, Trimalchio's flaws of erudition are shared, despite all their prerense, by both Encolpius and Eumolpus, cf. e.g. Slater (1990), 95, 208. On the onomastics in the Satyricon see a monograph by Priuli ( 1975); on the literary use of names, cf. Schmeling (19696); for the political repercussions of Nero's philhellenism, see e.g. Griffin (1984), 119 fI; Rudich (1993), 186 ff., 283. The "performative" and "theatrical" aspects of Neronian culture have now become a fashionable subject for study - cf. above, the Introduction. In addition to Barrsch's (1994) recent monograph, note Alcock (1994) and Edwards (1994). For "theatricality" in the Cena, cf. Zeitlin (197 I b), 660 ff. ( Cena as a theatrum mundi - 662); Sandy ( 1974); Rosati (1983); Saylor (1987); Jones ( 1991 ); Bartsch (1994), 198 f. In what follows, I offer only a cursory treatment of this theme. On the scaenic and mimic in rhe Satyricon, d~ Sandy (1974); also Slater (1990), 29 ff., 36 f., 44 ff., 55 ff, 82 ff. and passim. For the different reactions to Nero's theatrics within various groups of the populace, cf. Rudich ( 1993), 41 ff. To list: Trimalchio's ostentatiously playing dice in public (33) and his public pederastic overtures (64, 75); public reading of his estate accounts (53) and of his will (71); his display of his wife's gold (67); his mock judicial proceedings (70) and mock funeral (78); his pronouncement (in poor verse) on the mortality of men (34) and another recitation of his own and Publilius Syrus' poetry (55 - this last, devoted to the woes ofluxury, creates by contrast with T rimalchio's own lifesryle an additional comic effect); his attempts at dancing (52), singing (73), and imitating music (trumpet - 64); his delivery of the novella about witches (63); his discourses on the Opimian wine (34); on digestion (47); on the Corinthian bronze (50); on the unbreakable glass (51 ); on crafts and professions (56); on rhe actors (53); on philology and astrology (39); on rhetoric (48); on historical. literary, and mythological themes (48, 50, 52, 55, 59); on the equality of men (71 ); on his estate (48); on his career (75 f.); on his funerary monument (71); and, finally, his numerous (most of them silly) puns (cf. above, n. 165). As regards his guests, note especially the Werewolf novella told by Niceros (61 f.) and Habinnas' account of the funeral feast (66); add to this the performance by the acrobats (53) and the Homeristae (59). Cf. the comment ad loc. by the Loeb editor (1969): "The name of the Italian god Liber ... has nothing to do with liber, "free" or liberare, "to set free," bur was fancifully derived from the fact that wine frees people from cares. Trimalchio, who confers freedom on slaves, therefore takes Liber as his patron and as his father. His real father in fact had nor been a free man." On the political meaning of the word libertas under the Julio-Claudians, see Wirszubski ( 1950); cf also Rudich ( 1993), XXV ff., 249 f., 287 f.

353

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TO CHAPTER

3. PP. 240-41

170 On Trimalchio's control of his audience, see Slater (1990), 67 ff, 77 ff, 82 ff, although I differ with him on a number of points and remain unconvinced by his all-coo-modern interpretation of the Cena, following the theories of Stanley Fish, as a "self-consuming product;" and Herzog (1989) who links (140 ff) Trimalchio's "fescliche Zwangveranstaltung" to the theme of the "Imperial madness" ("Caesarenwahnsinn"). Note the episode of the boy acrobat at the peak of his performance collapsing on Trimalchio and the latter's imaginative, even if absurdly complacent, response to the embarrassment (54, 5): in vicem enim poenae venit decretum Trimalchionis quo puerum iussit Liberum esse, ne quis posset dicere tantum virum essea servo vulneratum; note also the Croesus-Scylax imbroglio (64) and Trimalchio's quarrel with Forrunata (74). On a few occasions (34, 52, 54, 74) the reader, however, is left uncertain whether particular happenings were owing to invention by Trimalchio, improvisation by his slaves, or mere accident; cf. Slater (I 990), 83. 171 On personal patronage in the Roman Empire, see Saller (1982); cf. also Rudich ( 1993), 249 f. 172 76, 2: coheredem me Caesarifecit, et accepipatrimonium laticlavium; ibid., 9: coepiper libertosfaenerare, ibid; cf. clauses in Trimalchio's will regarding the manumission of his slaves Phylargyrus and Cario (71). 173 For che status of Trimalchio's guests, note 8. 6: reliquos autem collibertos eius cave contemnas. Hermeros muse be che same person (cf. 36, 7: eum qui supra me accumbebat, 57, I: is ipse qui supra me discumbebat) who earlier (37 f.) entertained Encolpius with gossip about Trimalchio and Forcunaca in a remarkable blend of admiration and envy. 174 41, 9: Nos libertatem sine tyranno nacti; cf. Slater ( 1990), 64, but note the choice of words and che syntax reminiscent of Republicanisc pronouncements. Note Walsh (1970), 82: "One chinks at once of the Cena as a parable of the author's own life at court, with the ambivalence of Encolpius towards Trimalchio reflecting Petronius' own relationship with Nero." On the vocabulary of social dependence in the Satyricon, see Filippo, Guido, and Cervellera ( 1987). 175 Cf. 36, 4: Damus omnes plausum a famiLia inceptum; 48, 7: Haec aLiaque cum ejfusissimis prosequeremur laudationibus; 52, 7f.: Excipimus urbanitatem iocantis . .. Ceterum laudatus Trimalchio hilarius bibit, 55, 1: Comprobamus nos factum; 64, 1: Miramur nos et pariter credimus; cf 35, 1: Laudationem ferculum est insecutum; note also che outcry ofTrimalchio's friends and slaves at the reading of his will (72). For the political aspects of adulatio see Rudich (1993), xxi f., 252 and passim; on the notion of dignitas, ibid., xviii ff 176 34, 8: Potantibus ergo et accuratissime nobis lautitias mirantibus; 40, 1: "Sophos'' universi clamamus et sublatis manibus ad cameram iuramus Hipparchum Aratumque comparandos ilfi homines non fuisse, 47, 7: Gratias agimus liberalitati indulgentiaeque eius, et subinde castigamus crebris potiunculis risum; 49, I ff.: Mirarz· nos celeritatem coepimus ... tanto quidem magis, quod longe maior nobis porcus videbatur esse, quam paulo ante apparuerat. 177 Cf. Encolpius' sarcasm in 32, 1 in the dining hall: expressit imprudentibus risum and passim; note also the vocabulary used by him such as taeterrima voce (35, 6); Nee uLLustot malorum finis foisset (69, 6); !bat res ad summam nauseam (78, 5) and the like, and che growing desire of the trio to escape. Further, see 57, l: Ceterum Ascyltos, itemperantis licentiae, curn omnia sublatis manibus eluderet et usque ad lacrimas rideret, and 58, 1: Post hoe dictum Giton, qui ad pedes stabat, risum iam diu compressum etiam indecenter ejfudit. In 52, 7 Agamemnon applaudes ante omnes Trimalchio's jokes since he sciebat quibus meritis revocaretur ad cenam; 48, 5 ff.: he is embarrassed by Trimalchio in their exchange on rhetoric: to the laccer's silly joke "Quid est pauper?' he has to answer urbane only co hear from him an unexpected retort which disposes (unwittingly) of his entire profession: si factum est,

354

NOTES

178 179

180

18 I

182

TO CHAPTER

3, PP. 241-45

controversia non est; si factum non est, nihil est, cf. p. 217 above. Note also Hermeros' comment on Agamemnon adressing Ascyltus (57, 8): ecce magister tuus, homo maior natus: placemus illi. Regarding senatorial dissimulatio in view of Nero's stage performances see Rudich ( 1993), 41 ff. Cf. Niceros, in 61, 4: etsi timeo istos scholasticos, ne me [de}rideant, on Echion's outburst, cf. Paratore, 2 (1933), 144 f.; Walsh (1970), 122 f; Smith (1975), ad lac. Cf. 58, 8 f.: Ecce "Qui de nobis longe venio, late venio? Solve me." Dicam tibi, qui de nob is currit et de loco non movetur; qui de nobis crescit et minor fit, cf. for the episode, Friedlander (1906), ad lac.; Paratore, 2 (1933), 192 ff.; Perrochat (1952), ad loc.; Smith (1975), ad lac.; Pellegrino ( I 975), ad lac.; on Hermeros and semi-literacy, Daniel (I 980). See on triumphal paintings, Kleiner ( 1992), 47 f. For the Ara Pacis Augustae, ibid., 90 ff.; on Trajan's Column, 214 ff. Note ibid., 215, regarding the illustrated scrolls on which Trajan's war commentaries were recorded which could have been used both for the conception and interpretation of the reliefs on the column. Cf. on the adventus theme in Trimalchio's fresco and Imperial reliefs, Magi (1971). For Trimalchio's frescoed biography, see also Friedlander (1906), ad loc.; Paratore, 2 (l 933), 94 ff.; Maiuri (1945), ad loc.; Walsh (I 970), I l 8 ff.; Smith (1975), ad loc. Cf. e.g. striking similarities of Trimalchio's project with the funeral monument from the early Claudian period of C. Lusius Storax in Chieti, who was, like Trimalchio, a freedman and a sevir. the reliefs portray gladiatorial games and represent Storax himself seared in state in official garb and surrounded by friends and dependants - Kleiner (1992), 148 f. Note also the earlier Augustan comb of the baker M. Vergilius Eurysaces (see ibid., 105 ff.), a huge construction decorated with reliefs illustrating the process of baking the bread - "a baker version of Augustus' Res Gestae" (ibid., I 07) - one recalls Trimalchio's mention of ships in full sail to indicate his business. In the portrait relief the baker is depicted with his wife (as Trimalchio also wished), and their attire "demonstrates that the portraits ... are based on the contemporary Imperial and aristocratic models" (ibid.). Further on Trimalchio's monument, cf. Friedlander (1906), ad loc.; Paratore, 2 (1933), 250 ff.; Maiuri (1945), ad lac.; Perrochat (1952), ad lac.; Smith (1975), ad lac. As regards the recognition of social and economic contrasts, cf. in Ganymede's speech (44, 3): !taque populus minutus laborat; nam isti maiores maxillae semper Saturnalia agunt, cf. Walsh ( 1970), 30. Note, however, the same character's characteristic nostalgia for the "good old days," 44, 4 ff.: 0 si haberemus illos leones,

quos ego hie inveni, cum primum ex Asia veni . .. memini Safinium: tune habitabat ad arcum veterem, me puero, piper, non homo ... Sed rectus, sed certus, amicus amico, cum quo audacter posses in tenebris micare. In curia autem quomodo singulos [vel] pilabat [tractabat], nee schemas loquebatur sed derectum. Cum ageretporro in faro, sic illius vox crescebat tamquam tuba ... Et quam benignus resalutare, nomina omnium reddere, tamquam unus de nobis. Itaque illo tempore annona pro luto erat. Asse panem quern emisses, non potttisses cum altero devorare, cf. on Ganymede's and Echion's complaints of the status quo, Friedlander (1906), ad locos; Paratore, 2 (1933), 139 ff; Maiuri (1945), ad locos; Sullivan (1968), 142 ff.; Walsh (1970), 135; Rankin (1971), 15; Smith (1975), ad locos; Pellegrino (1975), ad locos. 183 See Rudich (1993), 44, 51, 274, 276. 184 48, 1 f.: "Vnum" inquit "si non placet, mutabo; vos illud oportet bonum faciatis. Deorum beneficio non emo, sed nunc quicquid ad salivam facit, in suburbano nascitur meo, quod ego adhuc non novi. Dicitur confine esse Tarraciniensibus et Tarentinis" (Tarentum is about 150 miles from Terracina-Smith (1975), ad lac.); cf 37, 6: Ipse nescit quid habeat, adeo saplutus est, also 76, 9: postquam coepiplus habere, quam tota patria mea habet- patria seems here to mean rhe land where Trimalchio was

355

NOTES

185

186

187

188

189

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born. For Hermeros' description of Trimalchio's estate, see further Friedlander ( 1906), ad loc.; Paratore, 2 ( 1933), 111 ff.; Sullivan (1968), 58, 137; Walsh (1970), I 23 (on language); Pellegrino (1975), ad loc. Virg. Aen., 6, 794 f.: super et Garamantas et lndos/ Proferet imperium; cf. 7, 605 f.; 8, 705 f.; Georg., 2, I 70 f.; Hor. Carm., 1, 12, 56: subiectos Orientis orae Seros et fndos, 4, 15, 22 ff.: non . .. edicta rumpent Julia non Getae/ Non Seres injidive Persae, cf. 3, 29, 27; 4, 4, 42; Cann. Saec., 56; also Prop., 2, 10, 15; 3, 4, I ff.; 4, 3, 10; d~ Ovid Ars, 1, 190. Cf. 48, 3: Nunc coniungere agellis Siciliam volo, ut cum Africam libuerit ire, per meos fines navigem; note also 77, 3: Quod si contigerit fundos Apuliae iungere, satis vivus pervenero. E.g.47, 12 L "Ex quota decuria es?" Cum ille se ex quadragesima respondisset, ... "Vide ergo" ait "ut diligenter ponas; si non, te iubebo in decuriam viatorum conici; " cf. 74, 7: Subiit igitur alia classis, et ilfi quidem exclamavere: "Vale Cai," hi autem ''.Ave Cai;" see also Slater (1990), 66; cf. 37, 9 f: Familia vero babae babae, non mehercules puto decumam partem esse qzwe dominum suum noverit. Ad summam, quemvis ex istis babaecalis in rutae falium coniciet. Also, 28, 6 f.: ad ianuam pervenimus, in cuius poste libel/us erat cum hac inscriptione fixus: "Quisquis servus sine dominico iussu Joras exierit, accipiet p!tzgas centum. "On the emperors' control of senatorial movements, see e.g. Talbert (1984), 140 f. For Trimalchio's libraries cf. 48, 4: Et ne me putes studia Jastiditum, ff bibliothecas habeo, unam Graecam, alteram Latinam. Buecheler's emendation III for II would have made Trimalchio's claim even more preposterous, but see against it Smith (1975), ad loc.; cf. Slater (I 990), 67; Scarr (1987). By his patron Trimalchio is made a co-heir with the emperor (76, 2: coheredem me Caesarifecit); cf. e.g. 77, 2: Praeterea cito accipiam hereditatem; 47, 12: testamento Pansae tibi re/ictus sum; on Nero's interest in collecting legacies, cf e.g. Rudich (1993), 133, 295. See on chis e.g. Friedlander (1906), ad loc.; Paratore, 2 (1933), 161 ff.; Maiuri (1945), 14 ff. and ad loc.; Perrochac (1952), ad loc.; Walsh (1970), 130 ff.; Rose (1971), 78 f.; Pellegrino (1975), ad loc.; cf. Smith (1975), 142: "Petronius has chosen outrageous figures to indicate che size of Trimalchio's Jamilia and estates (ro get some notion of the exaggeration involved, note chat on che present U.K. birch-race Trimalchio's Cumaean estate would have had a population of one and a half million, and Friedlander calculates thar the grain listed in § 4 would feed 10,000 people a year)." The exchange about rhe purchase of rhe gardens, stressing Trimalchio's affectation of disinterest in further material gain, may also have betrayed Petronius' tactics of self-preservation: aware char che estate-Empire parallel involves rhe risk of stretching the permissible ro rhe limit, he could have chosen thus to dissociate Trimalchio from Nero who was notorious for his greed; cf. also Smith (1975), 144: "Trimalchio shows his indifference to wealth by allowing che saltuarii to leave none of their property to him; contrast the tyrannical insistence of rhe emperors on receiving forced bequests from their subjects." Note Smith's (1975), ad loc., remarks on the actuarius' parody of legal jargon. On che acta diurna see RE s.v. acta (5) (Seeck); Slater (1990), 69; also Smith (1975), ad loc. Cf. Suet. Gal, 12, suggesting that such accounts could be presented to the emperor in the course of rhe dinner. Flinck (1926) examines Trimalchio's acta with the reference to Fasti Ostienses. Note rhe use of the month's name sextilis instead of the official Augustus "which must be meant to sound a little quaint, especially when it is followed by the precision of in praedio Cumano quod est Trimalchionis" - Smith (1975), l 43. I find no reason to interpret edicta aedilium as the enactment of the local magistrates: since rhe actuarius' report concerns the affairs exclusively within the confines of Trimalchio's praedium, one muse assume that irs size required its own police just as ir had its own law-courts (reus foetus

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dispensator et iudicium inter cubicularios factum, 53, 10); cf. Smith (1975), ad loc. In regard to the punishment of the atriensis, note ibid., 145: "The penalcy imposed on him gains its absurdity from the reputation of Baiae as a centre of pleasure ... and from its closeness to the town in which the Cena is set;" cf. Rose's (1971), 78, observation that Nero also sent criminals to the same area of exile. On the laesa maiestas see e.g. Rudich (1993), xxv, 254; cf. Rose (1971), 78 f. Cf. in this context Trimalchio's order to Habinnas, in the moment of his quarrel with Forrunata, to leave out her image on his projected tomb (74, 17: nolo, statuam eius in monumento meo ponas) which arguably implies subtle mockery of damnatio memoriae. Rose (1967) argues that the actuarius' account is an intentional fiction put up on Trimalchio's order. The non sequitur on which this argument is based does not suffice to validate it, since this makes only one example in the series of logical nonsense characteristic of the novel's narrative in general, and of the Cena in particular, adding up to the spirit of absurdity that pervades Petronius' world (cf. also below, section 7). But even if one consents that the author may have intended T rimalchio hyberbolically to inflate the size and scale of his estates, the satiric parallels with the Imperial domain and the Empire itself would remain conspicuous, reflecting on both subject and object of travesty. That Pecronius followed the widespread practice of recitation is strongly argued by Sullivan ( 1985), 160 ff.; cf. Slater (1990), 11 f. From my entire argument it follows that Walsh's (1970), 70, restriction of Petronius' intended audience only to his own "trusted intimates" is both superfluous and unnecessary: it fails to appreciate the author's efforts at consistent and elaborate strategic irony. Similarly, discard the possibility chat Petronius concealed the Saryricon from Nero, while allowing it to circulate in a sort of "samizdat." That would have constituted an irrefutable proof of his animus nocendi and instantly place him in considerable danger. There is hardly any viable way to ascertain the Arbiter's writing procedures. Sullivan's (1985), loc. cir., view that the Satyricon was written episodically for the purpose of court performance seems to me problematic: cf. Hubbard (I 986), Slater (1990), 11 f. Note, however, the latter's caveat: 'This issue is not, of course, whether it could have been given an oral performance, bur whether it was written episodically" (loc. cir., emphases Slater's). Even more nebulous I find attempts to establish the approximate dare of the novel's composition: it could have been written piecemeal for any period of time. The terminus post quern seems to be the year of Perronius' consulship which Rose ( 1971), 57, dates to AD 63, bur one must reject as implausible his reduction of the author's entire writing process to several months of AD 65-66. The term comes from the German Rezeptiontheorie - see e.g. Jauss (I 982), 22 ff.; cf. Slater (1990), I 6 ff. For the complexity of the Satyricon 's architectonics note especially Hubbard (1986). This is not the place to inquire into the knotty question of why the existence of the Satyricon is never mentioned by any of our extant authorities until late antiquity. It may well be a matter of chance, or owing to their embarrassment in the face of the novel's pervasive obscenity. After all, rhe Priapea (even despite its association with Virgil) does not receive much mention in our sources either - Parker ( I 988), 32. Cf. Rudich (1993), 156. Cf. Ovid's inimicissimus hostis ( Trist., 2, 77 ff.); above, the Introduction. See Arrowsmith (1966); also Bacon (1958); Cameron (1970); and esp. Herzog (1989). Cf. Leeman (1967), 157: "Un'epoca di paurosa minaccia di morce e di inaudiro benessere materiale, in cui gli uomini cercano di salvare la loro liberca e la loro essenza di uomini, rifugiandosi sia in un moralismo rigido e spasmodico, sia in un immoralismo cinico e spiecato - un'epoca non de! tutto dissimile dalla nostra." Dopp (1991) argues against the existential sense of death on the part of

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the novel's characrers and, furthermore, ascribes to Petronius an intent to satirize Seneca's view of it, but has also to acknowledge the deeper link between the attitudes of the two: "Und doch steht er Seneca in einer Hinsicht naher, als er auf den ersten Blick scheinr: denn wenn Petron in seinem Roman Menschen vorfohrt, denen es nicht gelingt, zu jener von Seneca geforderten, die Lebensfohrung pragenden 'meditatio mortis' vorzusrossen, so verweist dies doch wohl auf denselben Massstab, der Senecas leidenschafrlichen Appell zugrundeliegt" ( 162). Cf. Arrowsmith in the Introduction to his translation of the Satyricon (1959), xvii: ''Encolpius ... begins a stale rhetorical set-piece on the vicissitudes of human fortune only to come upon the unmistakable high language of passionate conviction;" cf. Dopp (1991), 151 f. I am not convinced by Walsh's (1970), 102 f, reading of the whole scene as yet another satire of declamation. One needs only to contrast it with Encolpius' and Giton's exchange as they prepared to drown ( I 14) which clearly parodies the cliche rhetoric of lovers; cf further on this passage, e.g. Paratore, 2 (1933), 371 f.; Sullivan (1968), 164; Rankin (1971), 43. Conte ( 1987) offers for 141, 4 a clever emendation devorarint for devoverint, which allows him to read the passage as the satirical reversal of the tradition about Pythagoras' stay in Croron. Cf. also Rankin (l 971 ), 104 f.: "It is not hard to envisage a school theme which calls upon the student in rhetoric to defend amhropophagy: such an exercise would not be any more extreme than some of those cited in I, 1-3," and Magnani (199 I), 147 f. "E in realta un inquierudine ben piu forse profonda, che sembra uscire dalle pagine de! romanzo ed investirci: l'angustia di Petronio che, di frame al disgusto per una societa de! tutto arida e ad un pensiero di mane che si fa sempre piu insistenre, propane l'antropofagia come naturale punro di approdo di una societa che ha inverriro ii movimenco