The Satyricon | Page 3

must
be regarded as settled," says Theodor Mommsen (Hermes, 1878); "this
narrative is unsurpassed in originality and mastery of treatment among
the writings of Roman literature. Nor does anyone doubt the identity of
its author and the Arbiter Elegantiarum of Nero, whose end Tacitus
relates."
In any case, the author of this work, if it be the work of one brain, must
have been a profound psychologist, a master of realism, a natural-born
story teller, and a gentleman.
b--His principal object in writing the work was to amuse but, in
amusing, he also intended to pillory the aristocracy and his wit is as
keen as the point of a rapier; but, when we bear in mind the fact that he
was an ancient, we will find that his cynicism is not cruel, in him there
is none of the malignity of Aristophanes; there is rather the attitude of
the refined patrician who is always under the necessity of facing those

things which he holds most in contempt, the supreme artist who suffers
from the multitude of bill-boards, so to speak, who lashes the posters
but holds in pitying contempt those who know so little of true art that
they mistake those posters for the genuine article. Niebuhr's estimate of
his character is so just and free from prejudice, and proceeds from a
mind which, in itself, was so pure and wholesome, that I will quote it:
"All great dramatic poets are endowed with the power of creating
beings who seem to act and speak with perfect independence, so that
the poet is nothing more than the relator of what takes place. When
Goethe had conceived Faust and Margarete, Mephistopheles and
Wagner, they moved and had their being without any exercise of his
will. But in the peculiar power which Petronius exercises, in its
application to every scene, to every individual character, in everything,
noble or mean, which he undertakes, I know of but one who is fully
equal to the Roman, and that is Diderot. Trimalchio and Agamemnon
might have spoken for Petronius, and the nephew Rameau and the
parson Papin for Diderot, in every condition and on every occasion
inexhaustibly, out of their own nature; just so the purest and noblest
souls, whose kind was, after all, not entirely extinct in their day.
"Diderot and a contemporary, related to him in spirit, Count Gaspar
Gozzi, are marked with the same cynicism which disfigures the Roman;
their age, like his, had become shameless. But as the two former were
in their heart noble, upright, and benevolent men, and as in the writings
of Diderot genuine virtue and a tenderness unknown to his
contemporaries breathe, so the peculiarity of such a genius can, as it
seems, be given to a noble and elevated being only. The deep contempt
for prevailing immorality which naturally leads to cynicism, and a heart
which beats for everything great and glorious,--virtues which then had
no existence, --speak from the pages of the Roman in a language
intelligible to every susceptible heart."
e--Beck, in his paper, "The Age of Petronius Arbiter," concluded that
the author lived and wrote between the years 6 A.D. and 34 A.D., but
he overlooked the possibility that the author might have lived a few
years later, written of conditions as they were in his own times, and yet

laid the action of his novel a few years before. Mommsen and Haley
place the time under Augustus, Buecheler, about 36-7 A.D., and
Friedlaender under Nero.
d--La Porte du Theil places the scene at Naples because of the fact the
city in which our heroes met Agamemnon must have been of some
considerable size because neither Encolpius nor Asclytos could find
their way back to their inn, when once they had left it, because both
were tired out from tramping around in search of it and because Giton
had been so impressed with this danger that he took the precaution to
mark the pillars with chalk in order that they might not be lost a second
time. The Gulf of Naples is the only bit of coastline which fits the
needs of the novel, hence the city must be Naples. The fact that neither
of the characters knew the city proves that they had been recent arrivals,
and this furnishes a clue, vague though it is, to what may have gone
before.
Haley, "Harvard Studies in Classical Philology," vol. II, makes out a
very strong case for Puteoli, and his theory of the old town and the new
town is as ingenious as it is able. Haley also has Trimalchio in his favor,
as has also La Porte du Theil. "I saw the Sibyl at Cumae," says
Trimalchio. Now if the scene of the dinner is actually at Cumae this
sounds very peculiar; it might even