Study Guide to Satyricon by Petronius

Intelligent Education

• Publisher: Influence Publishers
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781645423737
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Guías de estudio
• Subtopic: Guías de estudio

A comprehensive study guide offering in-depth explanation, essay, and test prep for Petronius’ Satyricon, a once hardly-known work that has become one of the most popular and certainly one of the most influential books of our time. As a collection of prose and passages of first-century A.D. Rome, Satyricon continues to inspire avant-garde novelists, film-makers, playwrights, and poets. Moreover, Pentronius provides an early written text that includes literary techniques such as burlesque, epics, romance, and elements of picaresque novels. This Bright Notes Study Guide explores the context and history of Pentronius’ classic work, helping students to thoroughly explore the reasons it has stood the literary test of time. Each Bright Notes Study Guide contains: - Introductions to the Author and the Work
- Character Summaries
- Plot Guides
- Section and Chapter Overviews
- Test Essay and Study Q&As The Bright Notes Study Guide series offers an in-depth tour of more than 275 classic works of literature, exploring characters, critical commentary, historical background, plots, and themes. This set of study guides encourages readers to dig deeper in their understanding by including
essay questions and answers as well as topics for further research.

INTRODUCTION TO PETRONIUS

HIS LIFE, WORK, AND INFLUENCE

Today's avant-garde novelists, film-makers, playwrights, and poets have found inspiration and even a model in a first-century A.D. work called the Satyricon composed by the Roman Petronius. It is fair to say that this once hardly-known work has become one of the most popular and certainly one of the most influential books of our time. We aim here to show the student and the general reader why and how this has happened, and to enhance their personal experience of the Satyricon. We shall investigate the social and cultural conditions in Petronius' time, and observe the similarities between his age and ours; review in detail the content, style, and techniques of the Satyricon and comment on the reasons for its appeal to the modern reader; and supply numerous suggestions for further study of both Petronius and his modern disciples.

PETRONIUS' LIFE AND DEATH

In life and in death, Petronius seems both mysterious and contradictory. So far as we can ascertain, there are no specific autobiographical clues in his classic work, Satyricon. We have no information about the circumstances of his birth; a reasonable guess would be that he was born about 20 A.D. From evidence supplied by the Roman historian, Tacitus (c. 55 A.D.-c. 117 A.D.), we infer that Petronius died in 66 A.D. This account of Petronius' character and career is found in Tacitus' Annales (XVI 18-19):

During the day he slept, but at night he conducted his business and enjoyed life. While hard work often brings fame to some, Petronius became well known by his idleness. But through all this he was not considered a debauchee or profligate like many who waste their incomes; rather he was held to be a man of refined luxury. The freer and more careless his deeds and words were, the more they were admired for their look of natural simplicity. First as proconsul of Bithynia and then as consul, Petronius showed that he could be energetic and equal to any task. Then with another about-face, Petronius returned to his old vices or affectation of vice and was chosen to be a member of Nero's innermost circle of friends, where he soon was regarded as Arbiter of Elegance. Nero soon came to believe nothing delightful or charming unless Petronius first approved it. Because of Petronius' position of power with Nero, Tigellinus, prefect of the Praetorian Guard, became jealous of Petronius and viewed him as a rival and even his superior in the study and practice of pleasure. By playing on Nero's cruelty, his worst passion, Tigellinus aroused the emperor's suspicions and accused Petronius of having been a friend of the traitor Scaevinus. Next Tigellinus bribed one of Petronius' servants to give evidence against him, removed any recourse to defense, and imprisoned most of his staff and servants. At the same time that all this was happening, Nero was making his way to Campania. Petronius set out in that direction but was stopped when he had gone as far as Cumae. No longer would he torture himself with thoughts of fear and hope; neither would he recklessly throw away his life. After having cut his veins, he bound them up, only to open them again as the mood struck him. Further, he kept up conversations with his friends, not on serious topics like glory and courage. He asked his friends not to bore him with discussions of immortality and the thoughts of philosophers, but to read him light verses and love songs. While he had some of his servants flogged, to others he gave large gifts. He would sleep for awhile, then dine. Though death was forced on him, Petronius made it appear natural. While many of those compelled to commit suicide flattered Nero and Tigellinus in their wills in hope of gaining something, Petronius refused. In fact, Petronius made an exact list of all the sexual offenses of Nero, together with the names of his male and female partners, itemized which acts were particularly perverted, and sent the list under his own seal to Nero. He then broke his signet-ring so that it could not be used to endanger others.^*

[Footnote *: Translations from the Latin given in this Bright Note are by the original contributor, Professor Gareth Schmeling.]

If Petronius believed in anything, it was a kind of Epicurean existence. He both lived well and died well. The two most famous Stoics of the day, Seneca and Lucan, who preached a fairly rigid morality and philosophized on living and dying, both lived and died poorly. Seneca, who extolled all virtues, grew rich under Nero, then flattered the emperor in lavish terms in hope of a longer life, and finally died quite unlike a good Stoic. Lucan, when implicated in a plot to kill Nero, named his own mother as one of the conspirators, in an attempt to get lenient treatment. Whereas Seneca and Lucan preached the proper living and dying, it was Petronius who followed through. Furthermore, Petronius' literary goals were totally opposed to those of Lucan and Seneca and he parodied some of their works in his Satyricon. Jeremy Taylor, the famous English cleric, in his The Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying (1651), comments very favorably on the character of Petronius.

EXTANT WORK OF PETRONIUS

The Satyricon has suffered much in its passage from Petronius to us. We now possess a little more than two of the original twenty or so books of the Satyricon, and much of that, the Cena Trimalchionis, was not discovered until about 1640, when it was found at Trau in Dalmatia by Marinus Statileus. Sometime early in the Middle Ages, a copyist had made only excerpts of the Satyricon. Perhaps the length of the Satyricon prevented its coming down to us in its entirety. Except for the Cena, the excerptor chose just bits and pieces from the prose, while he preserved much of the poetry intact. The extant Satyricon runs to only about 35,000 words.

Form and Title of the Satyricon. In the broadest sense the form of the Satyricon is prosimetric, a melange of prose and verse. While the greatest share of the Satyricon is written in prose, there is a considerable amount of poetry: Petronius writes in at least nine different meters and includes two long poems, one of 65 lines and another of 295. This mixture of prose and verse was apparently first used in the third century B.C. by Menippus of Gadara as a vehicle for satire. The learned Roman Varro also used the form and from him it passed on to Seneca and Petronius. Seneca used the form of Menippean satire, in his Apocolocyntosis, a biting satire on the apotheosis of the emperor Claudius on his death in 54 A.D. After Petronius, Menippean satire was employed by Macrobius, Boethius, and Martianus Capella.

The Latin word satura, from where we derive our word satire, meant much more to the ancients than our word satire does to us. By satire we mean any type of literature directed toward the correction of vices by means of ridicule. To the Romans, satura meant a potpourri of themes or stories. Horace classified his Trip to Brundisium (Satire 1.5) as a satura. Therefore by designating the Satyricon as Menippean satire scholars do not mean to imply that the Satyricon is everywhere satiric. On the other hand, there is in the Satyricon much of what we would call satire. Throughout the ensuing discussion of the Satyricon, elements of satire will be noted as they arise.

Apparently there are at least three reasons why Petronius chose to entitle his novel the Satyricon. He wants to tell his readers that this is a work about satyrs. In classical mythology, satyrs were forest revelers who attended the deity Bacchus; in form they were conceived of a half-men, half-goats, and they were notoriously lustful. Of course, any Roman who was brutish and lascivious would be dubbed a satyr. Furthermore, in an early episode of the Satyricon there is much talk of satyricon, the most famous of Roman aphrodisiacs. Petronius loves such word-play and uses it throughout his work. Finally, of course, as we have noted, Satyricon is a satire. William Arrowsmith summed it up very neatly when he described the Satyricon as a book of "satyr-things satirically treated."

In its original form of twenty books, the Satyricon was one of the longest books written in the ancient world. But one should always keep in mind, when discussing ancient literature, that a work like the Satyricon was written to be read aloud, and then only one book at a time. Around Nero's imperial court had sprung up a literary circle to which Petronius would read his new work. The Cena Trimalchionis, or Banquet of Trimalchio, is the subject treated in Book 15, the whole of which can be read aloud in a little more than one hour. Nero was very much interested in literature and tried to promote young talent. At court there developed a coterie of literary talent to rival that at the court of Augustus: Seneca, Persius, Lucan, and Petronius. Before Nero became completely deranged and totally under the influence of the corrupt Tigellinus, he was a true patron of the arts. But his better instincts gave way to evil and he became jealous of the fame of Seneca and Lucan. Seneca withdrew from the public eye, but it was not enough. Lucan was forbidden to publish anything. Finally Nero became jealous of Petronius. All three paid for their talent with their lives. Persius, luckily, died young.

BURLESQUE

Burlesque is the term used for the literary form in which both people and their actions are made ridiculous through incongruity. In Petronius, everything and anything is proper subject material for burlesque. Organized religion and religious superstition are frequently attacked. In this Petronius shares the Epicurean's dislike for transcendental deities. The growing class of nouveau riche - especially former slaves and freedmen from the eastern empire, who by wise investment and unscrupulous means stumbled to prominence outside the best circles - is constant grist for the Petronian mill. Trimalchio, the most famous character in the Satyricon, is one of this class, and Petronius, rather than trying to condemn Trimalchio's lowest-class manners, allows Trimalchio to put himself down and thus produce a parody of himself. No class of women fares well at the hands of Petronius: faithful wives always prove in the end to be unfaithful, priestesses are found to be a disgrace to organized religion, and the worst of vices are laid at the feet of even teenage girls. All female figures are portrayed in the first place as virtuous only to fall to the slightest temptation. And some, even at the time of emphasizing their own virtue, do not desist from entering into sham...