In any case, the author of this work, if it be the work of one brain, must have been a profound psychologist, a master of realism, a natural-born story teller, and a gentleman.
b--His principal object in writing the work was to amuse but, in amusing, he also intended to pillory the aristocracy and his wit is as keen as the point of a rapier; but, when we bear in mind the fact that he was an ancient, we will find that his cynicism is not cruel, in him there is none of the malignity of Aristophanes; there is rather the attitude of the refined patrician who is always under the necessity of facing those things which he holds most in contempt, the supreme artist who suffers from the multitude of bill-boards, so to speak, who lashes the posters but holds in pitying contempt those who know so little of true art that they mistake those posters for the genuine article. Niebuhr’s estimate of his character is so just and free from prejudice, and proceeds from a mind which, in itself, was so pure and wholesome, that I will quote it:
“All great dramatic poets are endowed with the power of creating beings who seem to act and speak with perfect independence, so that the poet is nothing more than the relator of what takes place. When Goethe had conceived Faust and Margarete, Mephistopheles and Wagner, they moved and had their being without any exercise of his will. But in the peculiar power which Petronius exercises, in its application to every scene, to every individual character, in everything, noble or mean, which he undertakes, I know of but one who is fully equal to the Roman, and that is Diderot. Trimalchio and Agamemnon might have spoken for Petronius, and the nephew Rameau and the parson Papin for Diderot, in every condition and on every occasion inexhaustibly, out of their own nature; just so the purest and noblest souls, whose kind was, after all, not entirely extinct in their day.
“Diderot and a contemporary, related to him in spirit, Count Gaspar Gozzi, are marked with the same cynicism which disfigures the Roman; their age, like his, had become shameless. But as the two former were in their heart noble, upright, and benevolent men, and as in the writings of Diderot genuine virtue and a tenderness unknown to his contemporaries breathe, so the peculiarity of such a genius can, as it seems, be given to a noble and elevated being only. The deep contempt for prevailing immorality which naturally leads to cynicism, and a heart which beats for everything great and glorious,--virtues which then had no existence, --speak from the pages of the Roman in a language intelligible to every susceptible heart.”
e--Beck, in his paper, “The Age of Petronius Arbiter,” concluded that the author lived and wrote between the years 6 A.D. and 34 A.D., but he overlooked the possibility that the author might have lived a few years later, written of conditions as they were in his own times, and yet laid the action of his novel a few years before. Mommsen and Haley place the time under Augustus, Buecheler, about 36-7 A.D., and Friedlaender under Nero.
d--La Porte du Theil places the scene at Naples because of the fact the city in which our heroes met Agamemnon must have been of some considerable size because neither Encolpius nor Asclytos could find their way back to their inn, when once they had left it, because both were tired out from tramping around in search of it and because Giton had been so impressed with this danger that he took the precaution to mark the pillars with chalk in order that they might not be lost a second time. The Gulf of Naples is the only bit of coastline which fits the needs of the novel, hence the city must be Naples. The fact that neither of the characters knew the city proves that they had been recent arrivals, and this furnishes a clue, vague though it is, to what may have gone before.
Haley, “Harvard Studies in Classical Philology,” vol. II, makes out a very strong case for Puteoli, and his theory of the old town and the new town is as ingenious as it is able. Haley also has Trimalchio in his favor, as has also La Porte du Theil. “I saw the Sibyl at Cumae,” says Trimalchio. Now if the scene of the dinner is actually at Cumae this sounds very peculiar; it might even be a gloss added by some copyist whose knowledge was not equal to his industry. On the other hand, suppose Trimalchio is speaking of something so commonplace in his locality that the second term has become a generic, then the difficulty disappears. We today, even though standing upon the very spot in Melos where the Venus was unearthed, would still refer to her as the Venus de Melos. Friedlaender, in bracketing Cumis, has not taken this sufficiently into consideration. Mommsen, in an excellent paper (Hermes, 1878), has laid the scene at Cumae. His logic is almost unanswerable, and the consensus of opinion is in favor of the latter town.
III
REALISM. Realism, as we are concerned with it, may be defined as the literary effect produced by the marshaling of details in their exactitude for the purpose of bringing out character. The fact that they may be ugly and vulgar, or the reverse, makes not the slightest difference. The modern realist contemplates the inanimate things which surround us with peculiar complaisance, and it is right that he should as these things exert upon us a constant and secret influence. The workings of the human mind, in complex civilizations, are by no means simple; they are involved and varied: our thoughts, our feelings, our wills, associate themselves with an infinite number of sensations and images which play one upon the other, and which individualize, in some measure, every action we commit, and stamp it. The merit of our modern realists lies in the fact that they have studied the things which surround us and our relations to them, and thus have they been able to make their creations conform to human experience. The ancients gave little attention to this; the man, with them, was the important thing; the environment the unimportant. There are, of course, exceptions; the interview between Ulysses and Nausiskaa is probably the most striking. From the standpoint of environment, Petronius, in the greater portion of his work, is an ancient; but one exception there is, and it is as brilliant as it is important. The entire episode, in which Trimalchio figures, offers an incredible abundance of details. The descriptions are exhaustive and minute, but the author’s prime purpose was not description, it was to bring out the characters, it was to pillory the Roman aristocracy, it was to amuse! Cicero, in his prosecution of Verres, had shown up this aristocracy in all its brutality and greed, it remained for the author of the Cena to hold its absurdity up to the light of day, to lash an extravagance which, though utterly unbridled, was yet unable to exhaust the looted accumulations of years of political double dealing and malfeasance in office. Trimalchio’s introduction is a masterstroke, the porter at the door is another, the effect of the wine upon the women, their jealousy lest either’s husband should seem more liberal, their appraisal of each other’s jewelry, Scintilla’s remark anent the finesse of Habinnas’ servant in the mere matter of pandering, the blear-eyed and black-toothed slave, teasing a little bitch disgustingly fat, offering her pieces of bread and when, from sheer inability, she refuses to eat, cramming it down her throat, the effect of the alcohol upon Trimalchio, the little old lady girded round with a filthy apron, wearing clogs which were not mates, dragging in a huge dog on a chain, the incomparable humor in the passage in which Hesus, desperately seasick, sees that which makes him believe that even worse misfortunes are in store for him: these details are masterpieces of realism. The description of the night-prowling shyster lawyer, whose forehead is covered with sebaceous wens, is the very acme of propriety; our first meeting; with the poet Eumolpus is a beautiful study in background and perspective. Nineteen centuries have gone their way since this novel was written, but if we look about us we will be able to recognize, under the veneer of civilization, the originals of the Satyricon and we will find that here, in a little corner of the Roman world, all humanity was held in miniature. Petronius must be credited with the great merit of having introduced realism into the novel. By an inspiration of genius, he saw that the framework of frivolous and licentious novels could be enlarged until it took in contemporary custom and environment. It is that which assures for him an eminent place, not in Roman literature alone, but in the literature of the world.
a--INFLUENCE OF THE SATYRICON UPON LITERATURE. The vagrant heroes of Petronius are the originals from whom directly, or indirectly, later authors drew that inspiration which resulted in the great mass of picaresque fiction; but, great as this is, it is not to this that the Satyricon owes its powerful influence upon the literature of the world. It is to the author’s recognition of the importance of environment, of the vital role of inanimate surroundings as a means for bringing out character and imbuing his episodes and the actions of his characters with an air of reality and with those impulses and actions which are common to human experience, that his influence is due. By this, the Roman created a new style of writing and inaugurated a class of literature which was without parallel until the time of Apuleius and, in a lesser degree, of Lucian. This class of literature, though modified essentially from age to age, in keeping with the dictates of moral purity or bigotry, innocent or otherwise, has come to be the very stuff of which literary success in fiction is made. One may write a successful book without a thread of romance; one cannot write a successful romance without some knowledge of realism; the more intimate the knowledge the better the book, and it is frequently to this that the failure of a novel is due, although the critic might be at a loss to explain it. Petronius lies behind Tristram Shandy, his influence can be detected in Smollett, and even Fielding paid tribute to him.