Only the Naughty Bits

 

Novels cater to the tastes of the urban middle-class and require some sort of rudimentary public education and a viable network for dissemination. All this was already available in Ancient Egypt, a thousand years before it fell to the Macedonian protectorate. In the beginning such novel was probably more of a promptbook for the professional storyteller at the bazaars and marketplaces than a text for private reading. Writing a scroll was slow and costly. It is, however, an intriguing coincidence that the codex was invented roughly at the time when Petronius started writing his novel.

The Satyricon by Petronius Arbiter (22 – 65 AD) has reached us in a particularly bad shape. We look at a book that in all likelihood had never been widely disseminated.

Most fragments have been handed down to us in the form of private excerpts, of which nobody has as yet established the undisputed order. Since it is an unashamedly lewd book, our copyists must have been a bunch of schoolboys who selected only the juicy bits for a good wank in the dormitory. This leaves us with a collection of pornographic snippets from book 14, 15, and 16, out of perhaps twenty books, suggesting an unusually fat tome.

Petronius was a laid-back civil servant and notorious night owl. According to Tacitus "Gaius Petronius spent his days in bed, his nights at work and the enjoyments of life. That success, which most men achieve by dint of hard work, he won by laziness. Yet unlike those prodigals who waste themselves and their substance alike, he was not regarded as a spendthrift or debauchee, but rather a refined voluptuary. Indeed his words and actions displayed such apparent casualness and unconventional freshness that people found them all the more charming. Nonetheless, as governor of Bithynia and soon afterwards as consul, he proved himself a capable and energetic administrator. Later reverting to his former life, he was admitted as arbiter of taste into the circle of Nero's intimates. No imperial pastime or entertainment, if it lacked Petronius' approval, could be regarded as either elegant or luxurious. And so Tigellinus, the praetorian prefect, jealous of a rival whose expertise in the science of pleasure far surpassed his own, appealed to the emperor's cruelty (Nero's dominant passion) and accused Petronius of friendship with the conspirator Scaevinus."

"At that time the emperor was in Campania. Petronius had gone as far as Cumae when he was apprehended. The prospect of temporizing, with its attendant hopes and fears, seemed intolerable; equally he had no desire to dispatch himself hastily. So he severed his veins and then bound them up as the fancy took him, meanwhile conversing with his friends, not seriously or sadly or with ostentatious courage, but in light and frivolous conversation. He then rewarded some of his slaves and assigned beatings to others. He dined and then dozed so that his death, even though compulsory, might still look natural. Nor did he adopt the conventional deathbed routine of flattering Nero, Tigellinus, and the other worthies. Instead he wrote out a list of the emperor's debaucheries, citing by name each of his sexual partners, male and female, with a catalogue of his sexual experiments, and sent it off to Nero under seal. He then destroyed his signet ring so that it could not be used later for the purpose of incriminating others" (Tacitus, Annals, 16: 18ff). This looks very much like the man, one would expect to be the author of the Satyricon, there is just one thing: Tacitus’ Annals is either a forgery end to end or at least has been heavily tempered with.

Petronius’ novel straddles the entire scale from the vulgar to the mockingly sublime. The author betrays an uncanny sensitivity for trifles and little sensations. Just notice how the eye follows a drifting bird-feather, sailing down to the sea and bobbing there in narrow circles before being sucked under by the little waves dimpling the surface. His book gives an incredibly rich tapestry of local customs, idiosyncratic character traits, the smells and the passion of real people. Prior to the surviving part, the story seems to commence at Marseilles, which may or may not have been Petronius’ hometown.

The first person narrator Encolpius, for unknown reasons, has fallen foul of the god Priapus and goes on a quest to regain his erection. Apparently he is exiled from the city – after a year's entertainment at public expenses – or ran away from the plague. His travel by sea to Italy may not have been entirely on his own free will. Reaching Rome, Encolpius is threatened with death in the gladiatorial arena but somehow rescued. Freeloading and thieving, he moves south through Italy until a Tarentinean ship owner, Lichas, takes the handsome fellow under his wings. Encolpius, however, seduces Licha's wife and after committing some terrible outrage against his benefactor in the porticoes of Hercules at Baiae, a famous spa in the south of Italy, he steals the sacred robe and ceremonial rattle of the goddess Isis. A famous courtesan, Tryphaena, is entering into a love triangle between him, her and the handsome slave Giton. Growing jealous, Encolpius embarrasses his mistress in public and he and Giton gang up with another lowlife character, Ascyltus. The three get involved in the murder of a certain Lycurgus, rob his villa and hide the proceeds in the hemp of a ragged tunic.

Encolpius loses the garment with the stolen money, which causes mutual suspicions and jealousy among the trio. They separate. Still seeking to lift the curse of Priapus, Encolpius encroaches on a secret ritual conducted by the priestess Quartilla. The trio reunites in Naples and approaches a teacher of rhetoric, Agamemnon, who is running a school there. This is the point where the surviving text opens in the middle of a discussion about rhetoric and education.

© – 5/1/2009 – by Michael Sympson, 1,000 words, all rights reserved