Latin Fiction

Heinz Hofmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• Print ISBN: 9780415147217
• eBook ISBN: 9781134755752
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Latin Fiction provides a chronological study of the Roman novel from the Classical period to the Middle Ages, exploring the development of the novel and the continuity of Latin culture. Essays by eminent and international contributors discuss texts including:

* Petronius, Satyrica and Cena Trimalchionis
* Apuleius, Metamorphose(The Golden Ass) and The Tale of Cupid and Psyche
* The History of Apollonius of Tyre
* The Trojan tales of Dares Phrygius and Dictys Cretensis
* The Latin Alexander
* Hagiographic fiction
* Medieval interpretations of Cupid and Pysche, Apollonius of Tyre and the Alexander Romance.

For any student or scholar of Latin fiction, or literary history, this will definitely be a book to add to your reading list.

Part 1
Petronius

1
Petronius and the Satyrica

Gareth Schmeling

I The Author: Petronius

Tacitus (Annals 16.17–20) tells us a brief but famous history of a courtier of Nero who held a proconsulship in Bithynia and later became consul (AD 62), but who gained some fame or notoriety for a life-style of studied ease and natural elegance. His full name seems to be Titus Petronius Niger, and, though only a fairly close associate of Nero’s literary coterie, he somehow threatened the influence of Tigellinus, Prefect of the Guard, who turned the emperor against him, and Petronius was forced—without seeming to be— to kill himself (AD 66).¹ The form of his suicide has become a model for later literary and religious writers (e.g. Jeremy Taylor, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying (1651) to Nicholas Blake’s mystery, The Worm of Death (1961)). Our portrait of Petronius is so coloured by the power of Tacitus’ rhetoric, however, that uncareful critics see Tacitus’ Petronius behind various sentiments of Encolpius, the first-person narrator of the Satyrica. Tacitus does not mention the Satyrica, a fact which should not surprise us, nor does Plutarch or Pliny the Elder, each of whom briefly alludes to Petronius. Part of the attraction of Petronius and the mystery which surrounds him are due to the tantalizing bits of biographical information, the knowledge that he was close to Nero’s inner circle whose sexual practices are better imagined than known,² and the total absence of any didactic intent in the Satyrica (unlike Horace’s dictum in Ars Poetica 343, qui miscuit utile dulci—‘who mixes the useful with the sweet’).

For many years scholars have debated about the date of the Satyrica, some at one extreme placing it as early as Augustus, others at the end of the second century, some even as late as the fourth century AD. The weight of evidence, however, points to the years just preceding AD 66 and to the Petronius of Tacitus, Nero’s courtier, as its author.³ In the 2,000 years since his death Petronius has developed, as it were, a second persona, one unattached to the Satyrica: he is the ancient author of pornography. In these many years Petronius’ name has been affixed to a large number of obscene works which on their face could not have been written by any ancient author (Schmeling 1994).

II The work: The Physical Evidence of the Satyrica

The title of the novel by Petronius is most likely Satyrica (i.e. Satyricōn libri—‘books of the satyrica’), and is the title now preferred by scholars (Müller 1983:491–2, 1995). It imitates (or sets) the pattern for other ancient novels, e.g. Ephesiaca. The meaning of satyrica might well be something like ‘tales of satyrs’, adapted to a new loose, episodic prose structure. The most significant characteristic of the extant Satyrica is its physical condition: it survives in an exceedingly fragmentary state. The beginning of our extant Satyrica appears from manuscript evidence to come from book 14, the Cena Trimalchionis (‘Banquet of Trimalchio’) (one-third of the whole), from book 15, and the last 40 or so chapters from book 16. Sullivan (1968:36) speculates that the length of the original might have extended to 24 books (400,000 words!) in imitation of the Odyssey— each book possibly presented to an imperial literary gathering. All of this, of course, assumes many things not in evidence: that the manuscripts are accurate, that Petronius had a grand design at the outset for the Satyrica, and that he finished the work. The Satyrica is fragmentary for reasons which lie in the history of its transmission from antiquity, not for literary motives: Petronius did not structure his work to reflect a breakdown of Roman life, the fragmentary nature of existence. If the Satyrica ran to 24 books, it was a prime candidate for a copyist to write Excerpts from…. Then too, we might have the best bits of the Satyrica, the other 21 books not being very successful or entertaining—or perhaps too obscene or not obscene enough to attract the mind and spirit of a few rather dull copyists who, as it turned out, controlled the life and death of the Satyrica. As late as the twelfth century John of Salisbury seems to have possessed a rather large amount of the Satyrica, and there is evidence that in the thirteenth century the Satyrica and Cena were known in bulk in Dublin and Cambridge.⁴ I In the fifteenth century manuscript collectors as capable as Poggio had discovered and then lost a unique copy of the Cena.

The surviving sections of the Satyrica are supported by a strange assortment of manuscripts, and the manuscript tradition relating the story of how the text arrived from the ancient to the present time is not always clear. It is conjectured that the ancient world passed down to the medieval (AD 800) only excerpts of what was originally a long work, and what was handed down came mostly from later parts of the novel. This might indicate that Petronius had no central plan in mind when composing the early books of the Satyrica and only in the later books did the work take on a unifying structure and hold the interest of scribes. It seems that by 800 the archetype (lost) of the Satyrica had been excerpted in various ways and survived in only four forms: (1) A group of manuscripts called L contains the longer narrative (racy) pieces, but these fragments often seem unrelated; (2) another group of manuscripts called O presents the shorter pieces but these are better connected and contain material in dialogue and poetry; (3) the Cena Trimalchionis (chapters 26–78), transmitted in a single manuscript called H, representing about one-third of the extant work, survives in its entirety; (4) florilegia, or collections of short pieces by various authors. The fact that our present text is in as good a shape as it is, is owing to a long series of exceptional editors who have slowly made order out of chaos. I cite the work of Konrad Müller who between 1961 and 1995 established the common text of today. We are not certain of course that the arrangement of the chapters of the Satyrica today is also that of the author. In addition to the 141 chapters of our fragmentary novel, some 50 brief fragments have also been transmitted, attributed in one fashion or another to Petronius, which editors attach as a kind of appendix to the novel proper. These 50 fragments might refer to Petronius but not necessarily to his Satyrica.

III The Satyrica: Contents in Outline, Structure by Episodes

Let us begin with several assumptions: (1) that, of the Satyrica’s 24 books, we have some of book 14, all of 15, some of 16; (2) that the Satyrica of AD 66 did not begin where we pick it up in our chapter 1 in the area around Puteoli, but far away, perhaps as far away as Massilia (frag. 1) and that the hero of the novel is moving (possibly) in a southeasterly direction toward Lampsacus, the home of Priapus, where he will atone (in some humorous fashion) for offences committed against Priapus at some early (lost) point in the novel; (3) that, based on our extant portions, the hero (and narrator) of the novel is always accompanied by his boy-love Giton and by one other person, Ascyltus (1–82) then Eumolpus (83–141), making an unstable triad; (4) that the Satyrica is arranged, presented, and related to the reader or audience in discrete, not always closely tied episodes; (5) that every episode is set into a literary framework of some genre, for example, many features of the Cena resemble the tradition of symposium literature.

The extant Satyrica is composed of a connected series of nine major episodes told in the first-person by Encolpius:

1–6	Debate on the decline of rhetoric/education (Puteoli)
7–11	Quarrels of love triad dissolve in fragments
12–15	Stolen cloaks and gold coins
16–26	Sexual episode with Quartilla, priestess of Priapus
26–78	Dinner with Trimalchio
79–99	Eumolpus (poet) replaces Ascyltus in triad
100–115	Aboard Lichas’ ship, shipwreck (south Italy)
116–124	Journey to Croton, epic of Eumolpus

125–141

Our heroes pose as the rich beset by captatores (‘inheritanceseekers’)^5

At the core of the story are Encolpius and his comrades who live on the margin of society, stealing not working, flattering the rich, preying on the gullible, selling sex, and then move on. Though they are estranged from society, they are neither evil nor vicious,⁶ but almost Damon Runyon-type thieves (incompetent often). Each scene or episode is structured to resemble, or to remind the reader of, a literary genre; for example, chapters 12–15 resemble a plot of New Comedy; 16–26 is one of the Priapea in prose or the kind of short story which the Parthians were amazed to find in the luggage of Roman officers (Plutarch, Crassus 32); 126ff. is an hilarious travesty of the Odysseus-Circe affair; 80 is a struggle between two homosexual ‘brothers’ but portrayed as the fatal battle between Eteocles and Polynices. The only complete episode we possess is the Cena Trimalchionis in which Encolpius (almost as a third-person narrator) recounts the lives of Trimalchio and his fellow freedmen, various parts of which remind the reader of Plato’s Symposium, Horace’s Cena Nasidieni (‘Banquet of Nasidienus’, Satire 2.8), and other works.

The Satyrica opens (1–6) with a lively debate between Agamemnon and Encolpius over the sad state of education. Rhetoric is a topic of much discussion in the Satyrica and gives an artificial tone to the entire novel, whether it is the rhetoric of the educated like Encolpius and Agamemnon who try to give meaning to their words and to say something of substance but fail, or the rhetoric of freedmen who attempt to ape the language of their betters but fail. The opening episode dissolves into fragments, and Encolpius and his friend Ascyltus return to their lodgings where they quarrel over which of them should get to enjoy the favors of the young lad Giton (7–11). The instability of the love triangle is momentarily set aside because our heroes are short of money and must sell a cloak which they had stolen (12–15). In a scene reminiscent of New Comedy Ascyltus surrenders the cloak to its owner but retrieves a tunic containing gold coins. No sooner has our triad returned home than a banging on the door causes it to collapse and to reveal Quartilla, randy priestess of Priapus, who threatens, blusters, weeps, oozes sexual scents, and accuses Encolpius of having desecrated the rituals of Priapus (16–26). Priapus is a deity represented as a wood stump to which is attached a large erect penis. What exactly his rituals entail (beyond meaningless sexual revelry) we do not know, but it seems that it would be virtually impossible to profane them. Quartilla has come with the sole purpose of continuing Priapic rituals, which include the deflowering of a 7-year-old girl observed through a key hole, and which the Roman readers would associate with stage productions of bawdy mimes.

Agamemnon has invited our triad to a banquet at Trimalchio’s (26–78), a local millionaire freedman. Trimalchio is such a dominant presence at the banquet that Encolpius is forced to assume the role of reporter. The host bombards his guests with a variety of tasteless entertainments, acrobats, singers, foods, drinks, but above all with the speeches of freedmen, who tell tall tales, banter with each other, are easily insulted by our educated heroes, and complain about high prices and moral decay. The banquet comes to a sudden end when Trimalchio asks his guests to imagine him dead and to weep over him. Someone blows a funeral trumpet so loudly that the local fire brigade, believing it is a signal of a fire, rushes into Trimalchio’s house.

The sixth scene (79–99) introduces Eumolpus, a mediocre poet, who replaces Ascyltus. This is a transitional scene which moves the actors from the banquet near Puteoli toward Croton in the south. After expounding on the sad state of the arts, Eumolpus tells the story of the ‘Pergamene Youth’, or how he seduced a rich man’s son. This incongruity of outlook on the part of Eumolpus, who condemns deception only to practise the same, is a hallmark of Petronian characterization. The second triumvirate leaves the Puteoli area by boat only to discover that the captain is the man who had earlier been robbed by Encolpius and whose wife was seduced (100–115). Hopes for group sex cool the tempers of all concerned, and Eumolpus titillates everyone on board by telling the story of the ‘Widow of Ephesus’ or how a resourceful woman conquers death. A storm blows up, and the ship is wrecked. Shipwrecks and storm scenes are a staple of ancient narratives: from the Odyssey to the Aeneid to St Paul, shipwrecks are so common that the modern reader wonders why all ancient travellers did not walk.

In episode eight (116–124) Eumolpus amuses his comrades with a short epic version of the ‘Civil War’ between Caesar and Pompey, until they arrive at Croton. Our heroes are penniless, but everyone at Croton is...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part 1: Petronius
• Part 2: Apuleius
• Part 3: Apollonius King of Tyre
• Part 4: History and Romance, Saints and Martyrs
• Part 5: The Heritage of Latin Fiction
• Index