The Satyricon | Page 5

is to the author's recognition of the importance of environment, of the
vital role of inanimate surroundings as a means for bringing out
character and imbuing his episodes and the actions of his characters
with an air of reality and with those impulses and actions which are
common to human experience, that his influence is due. By this, the
Roman created a new style of writing and inaugurated a class of
literature which was without parallel until the time of Apuleius and, in
a lesser degree, of Lucian. This class of literature, though modified
essentially from age to age, in keeping with the dictates of moral purity
or bigotry, innocent or otherwise, has come to be the very stuff of
which literary success in fiction is made. One may write a successful
book without a thread of romance; one cannot write a successful
romance without some knowledge of realism; the more intimate the

knowledge the better the book, and it is frequently to this that the
failure of a novel is due, although the critic might be at a loss to explain
it. Petronius lies behind Tristram Shandy, his influence can be detected
in Smollett, and even Fielding paid tribute to him.

IV
FORGERIES OF PETRONIUS.
From the very nature of the writings of such an author as Petronius, it is
evident that the gaps in the text would have a marked tendency to
stimulate the curiosity of literary forgers and to tempt their sagacity,
literary or otherwise. The recovery of the Trimalchionian episode, and
the subsequent pamphleteering would by no means eradicate this
"cacoethes emendandi."
When, circa 1650, the library of the unfortunate Nicolas Cippico
yielded up the Trau fragment, the news of this discovery spread far and
wide and about twelve years later, Statileo, in response to the repeated
requests of the Venetian ambassador, Pietro Basadonna, made with his
own hand a copy of the MS., which he sent to Basadonna. The
ambassador, in turn, permitted this MS. to be printed by one Frambotti,
a printer endowed with more industry than critical acumen, and the
resultant textual conflation had much to do with the pamphlet war
which followed. Had this Paduan printer followed the explicit
directions which he received, and printed exactly what was given him
much good paper might have been saved and a very interesting chapter
in the history of literary forgery would probably never have been
written. The pamphlet war did not die out until Bleau, in 1670-71,
printed his exact reproduction of the Trau manuscript and the
corrections introduced by that licentiousness of emendation of which
we have spoken.
In October, 1690, Francois Nodot, a French soldier of fortune, a
commissary officer who combined belles lettres and philosophy with
his official duties, wrote to Charpentier, President of the Academy of

France, calling, his attention to a copy of a manuscript which he (Nodot)
possessed, and which came into his hands in the following manner: one
Du Pin, a French officer detailed to service with Austria, had been
present at the sack of Belgrade in 1688. That this Du Pin had, while
there, made the acquaintance of a certain Greek renegade, having, as a
matter of fact, stayed in the house of this renegade. The Greek's father,
a man of some learning, had by some means come into possession of
the MS., and Du Pin, in going through some of the books in the house,
had come across it. He had experienced the utmost difficulty in
deciphering the letters, and finally, driven by curiosity, had retained a
copyist and had it copied out. That this Du Pin had this copy in his
house at Frankfort, and that he had given Nodot to understand that if he
(Nodot) came to Frankfort, he would be permitted to see this copy.
Owing to the exigencies of military service, Nodot had been unable to
go in person to Frankfort, and that he had therefore availed himself of
the friendly interest and services of a certain merchant of Frankfort,
who had volunteered to find an amanuensis, have a copy made, and
send it to Nodot. This was done, and Nodot concludes his letter to
Charpentier by requesting the latter to lay the result before the
Academy and ask for their blessing and approval. These Nodotian
Supplements were accepted as authentic by the Academics of Arles and
Nimes, as well as by Charpentier. In a short time, however, the voices
of scholarly skeptics began to be heard in the land, and accurate and
unbiased criticism laid bare the fraud. The Latinity was attacked and
exception taken to Silver Age prose in which was found a French
police regulation which required newly arrived travellers to register
their names in the book of a police officer of an Italian village of the
first century.