Kenney_and_Clausen B.M.W.(eds.) - Get a Free Blog

PROSE SATIRE
2. PETRONIUS
Petronius' Satyrica, commonly but incorrectly known as Satyricon, 1 raise
abundant problems for literary historians and critics alike. Some of these
problems, concerning scale, structure, and plot, are due solely to the mutilation
of the text: if it were complete, they would vanish. Others, concerning genre,
style, and intention, are more deeply rooted, and could only be resolved if
several earlier works, now lost or fragmentary, were rediscovered. No Latin
writer excites more lively interest. Unfortunately it is not always accompanied
by due recognition of our ignorance.
The old dispute about date and authorship remains tenuously alive. As to
date, the social and economic situation presupposed, the cultural interests
revealed, and a few plausibly datable references 2 argue for composition during
Nero's reign, and a dramatic setting somewhat earlier. And, if Petronius
echoes Lucan, composition in the sixties, not the fifties, is indicated. Further,
no valid evidence supports a later dating. As to authorship, the work's character
accords well with what Tacitus records (Ann. 16. 18—19) about Nero's 'arbiter
of elegance' Petronius Niger, connoisseur and voluptuary extraordinary.
Again, the rare name Arbiter, attached to the author in certain manuscripts
and elsewhere, may well have derived (exactly how is unclear) from the
denomination arbiter elegantiae. Such arguments fall short of proving identity,
and a strict historian may still suspend judgement.
The title Satyrica, 'satyr histories' or, more freely, ' tales of wantonness',
recalling, for example, Milesiaca, 'Milesian tales', and poemenica, 'Shepherd
stories', suggests affinity to the Greek romantic novel, a genre which was
establishing itself and probably already popular by Petronius' time. But some
scholars maintain that satyrica is ambivalent: it would also, they think, have
recalled the superficially similar word satura, and thus suggested a satirical
purpose. Petronius' contemporaries could perhaps have confused these basically
different words, but they hardly needed to be told of a connexion with
satire evident throughout his work. His debt to the satirists is seen in subject
matter, for instance the dinner party (cf. Hor. Sat. 2.8), in characterization,
particularly of minor figures, and in employment of parody and burlesque.
And he may have taken the prosimetric form of his novel from Varro's Saturae
Menippeae: the genre was still alive, as the nearly contemporary Apocolocyntosis
divi Claudii shows. In spite of difference in scale, we might regard the Satyrica
as a natural development of Varro's satire, but a prosimetric fragment, recently
published, of what seems to be a Greek picaresque novel argues that he had
closer antecedents. 3 And Varro wrote a number of separate pieces (one ad-
1 2
See Appendix.
Rose (1971) zoff.
' Parsons (1971) 63—6.
635
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