Today, the talk will be about Petronius.
You'll learn who he was,
how he committed suicide at a banquet,
and why he's pretty often called "an author of the purest impurity."
"In his life, the day was spent in sleep, the night in responsibilities and amusements;
and as hard work had raised others to fame, so idleness had raised him."
We know very little for sure about Petronius himself,
and, as happens in ancient matters,
time itself has made things unclear.
And so, many learned people
have argued with one another over the age when Petronius lived and when his work, the books of the Satyricon, was composed—
some say that it was written (and, of course, that he lived) in the first century A.D., others in the second, still others in the third.
But among a good many, it's now basically agreed
that Petronius lived in the first century A.D.
But in order to dig up at least something about his life,
we have to have go back now to the writer Tacitus.
He alone can come, in a way, to our aid.
(Tacitus, after all, the well known writer of history,
whom many students
see in their dreams, hurling vocabulary words and unintelligible sentences, before an exam—
I know I've had that happen—
he committed to writing several things about the man named Titus Petronius Niger.)
And he, for a long time now,
has been considered to be the same person as
Gaius Petronius Arbiter,
who wrote the famous work The Satyricon.
So what did Tacitus,
well known for his clearsightedness,
put on paper about this man?
Not many things,
but that doesn't mean they should be scorned!
First, Petronius was the proconsul of Bithynia,
and afterwords consul.
And he fulfilled these offices in such a way
that Tacitus himself
wrote that he was "energetic and equal to affairs."
Later on,
he was adopted as the "Arbiter of Elegance"
among the friends of Prince Nero.
'Cause,
of course, all desires had to be fulfilled
with a certain . . .
. . . elegance.
And the prince considered nothing sweet,
nor worthy of him,
that the Arbiter of Elegance hadn't approved beforehand.
And because of this, this name of "Arbiter" was conferred on Petronius,
so that now he's Petronius Arbiter.
From these things, however,
was born the jealousy
of a certain Tigillinus.
who was the commander of the Praetorian Guard
(so he was in charge of the guards who defended the prince).
And elsewhere, Tacitus says
that he "had a foul childhood and a shameless old age."
So this man,
since he saw that Petronius was a rival, and
better as far as knowledge of pleasures than him,
blazed with rage—
that is, he was angry.
This, of course, he couldn't bear—
something had to be done.
So Tigellinus—
what, after all, would a man famed for virtue do?—
this chief of the Praetorian Guard
accused Petronius to Nero
of friendship with one Flavius Scaevinus.
And Scaevinus was one of those
who had plotted against Nero.
Now then, so that this lie would have greater credibility with the prince,
Tigellinus bribed a slave of Petronius's for evidence—
that is, so he would tell a story.
And Petronius the Arbiter
was arrested.
Petronius then,
since he couldn't bear to be under guard in Cumae for very long,
decided to commit suicide.
But how did he do this?
Did he swallow poison?
Did he stab a dagger into his chest?
Or did he offer himself to a bear for devouring?
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Unlike Cato the Younger,
who didn't hesitate to hurry his death,
Petronius didn't end his life quickly.
He did this in a strange way.
First, he cut his veins.
Then he wrapped them up them up,
But afterwards he opened them again,
and chatted with his friends at dinner.
And while they sat at dinner like that,
the conversation wasn't about incredibly serious matters,
about philosophy,
the immortality of the soul,
but about lighthearted things.
Why, even songs and poetry were listened to!
And Petronius, in the middle of this,
toward some slaves behaved generously,
but to others cruelly,
bestowing gifts and beatings.
Later, while he sat at dinner,
he yielded to sleep,
so that death would seem to be an accident,
rather than forced, as Tacitus says.
One work, the books of the Satyricon,
has reached us.
and it isn't complete;
the larger part of this work has been lost.
There are those who argue
that only a tenth
has reached us,
has been saved for us.
But let's spare our tears, please,
'cause the parts that exist
aren't entirely fragmented,
but are, as it were, stories or scenes
that can stand up well, in a way, by themselves.
They can be understood well enough on their own.
The Satyricon,
in Roman literature, can be considered, as it were, a black swan [lit. "a white bird"];
it gets pretty close to that genre
that is sometimes called "Roman stories," or novels.
And this genre of course exists in our time,
it flourishes in our time.
And they're those continuous stories
such as
The Lord of the Rings and
Crime and Punishment.
And, though it had its origin among the Greeks,
among Latin writers this genre
never truly flourished.
But there were, to be sure, writers, among whom
the greatest are Petronius
and Apuleius.
And about them, Macrobius wrote in this way:
"Plots stuffed full of the imaginary mishaps of lovers,
on which Petronius Arbiter expended so much energy
or in which, to our frequent wonder, Apuleius played.
Encolpius plays the main role in the work of Petronius.
And he's devoted to the art of rhetoric,
and he's the narrator, as it were, of the whole story.
Then there's his friend, Ascyltus,
and Giton, for whom both of them
pine—that is, they REALLY love him.
And these people have many and varied—
—and amazing!—adventures.
And I'm not sure
that the most famous of them aren't the story of
the widow of Ephesus
and of course the story of the werewolf.
But these stories
take a back seat to the fame of
Trimalchio's dinner.
'Cause in this part is narrated
a dinner hosted by Trimalchio, a self-made man,
who, though he started out a slave, became fabulously wealthy.
And a man is portrayed
of a certain boorishness
not to be scorned.
And this man of manners by no means polite
is the kind of man who doesn't hesitate
to do anything to excite praise and laughter,
'cause he always wants to make everybody laugh,
he's always after laughter.
and to show his riches—of which he has many, of course!—
he has the most exquisite banquets,
unheard of, laid out.
Sometimes absurd things.
And this man is completely engaged in magnificent living and jokes
(silliness, at least).
And there are those who think—maybe not without merit—
that Petronius was making fun of the habits of the prince
(Nero, of course),
and that he was hidden, as it were, under the name "Trimalchio
But not at all in every way
is he like Nero.
But when it comes to vices, they're not incredibly different—
certain ones, at least.
Lots of things can be said
about Petronius and his style of writing,
but now we'll just touch on this topic briefly.
The Satyricon,
and the greatest part of it that's usually called Trimalchio's dinner,
offers us incredibly diverse Latin conversation.
'Cause Petronius,
for the conversations to seem more probable
that are had at the table,
with no little skill makes up
characters talking to each other
so that each one's conversation, in a way,
matches that character's rank or circumstances
And so there are a lot of things in it
in slang and lower-class language.
And this language of all kinds,
so mixed up with one another—
we look for it elsewhere in vain.
Things like it aren't found elsewhere.
And, to cite an example of this,
among other things, we read "vīnus" written for "vīnum."
And then there an incredible number of really fun, really charming expressions,
like "a black cat crossed my path" [lit. "I plucked a bad ill-omened bird"]
and the well-known "it's raining buckets,"
which, although it now seems to many to be well-worn,
this found only in Petronius.
So rather a lot of things can be learned from this.
But learned men of previous centuries
didn't always shower Petronius with open praise.
who, because of frivolous and obscene plots,
was often called
"an author of the purest impurity."
But all the same, the Satyricon is a book really worth reading;
Petronius is able, amazingly,
to put such diverse characters before our eyes
that you know—you feel like you know
that these are real people.
So: read this work,
so that, next time you're drinking,
you can say, with Petronius,
"I'm drunk;
the wine has gone to my head."
That's all. Bye! —English subtitles by Joel Derfner–
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