The Great War was over, and a period of frantic excess followed in America, a period of uncertain rehabilitation in England. In both countries, an era of new mechanization, new construction, new and sometimes dubious opportunities for financial investment, and millions of new consumer goods was upending the old class structures and creating new classes of people in danger of being mechanized themselves, while the one-percenters partied so profligately they eventually crashed the system.
Accordingly, Fitzgerald a romantic elitist with a disposition toward socialism and Eliot whose snobbery was existential in its scope and dire in its conclusions chronicled the period with related forms of lyrical despair.
For Fitzgerald, the new elite were crass, unlettered, and deeply cruel to their economic inferiors, while an idealized past was unrecoverable and, frankly, probably not worth recovering. For Eliot, the present was a stale series of abortive encounters, while the future was a valley of bones, all omens pointing toward infertility and ruin.
Just ask Tiresias. The most conspicuous of the latter is Trimalchio — a former slave turned millionaire known for his coarse excesses, which exemplify the decadence of his class, his emperor, and his age — who would become a crucial figure for Fitzgerald.
Petronius wrote the Satyricon in the mids CE. It is, of course, a gloriously comical work. But the elegant cynicism that makes it so fun would emerge as a darker influence for future chroniclers of decline. In Fitzgerald, the Petronian influence contributes to the spectacle of a perilously decadent generation and class, and eventually to the death of dreams. Of course, the Petronian strain in each of these works is hardly a secret.
Not to mention the crushing realization that death has, as Eliot puts it, undone so many. Anyway, I found myself indoors one day, laughing over a scene in which Encolpius has shaved off all his hair, including his eyebrows, and branded his forehead as though he were a prisoner, all to escape being recognized by a furious man whose wife he once seduced.
So, I thought I would take a brief tour through the impression Petronius makes in these two works, while lobbying, gently, for more people to read the Satyricon — in times of despair, certainly, but also, one hopes, in times of optimism and prosperity, whenever they may come.
A Roman bureaucrat, statesman, and eventual courtier to Nero, Gaius Petronius served in the early 60s CE as proconsul and then consul of Bithynia, in modern Turkey. While the Satyricon apes various conventions of epic poetry, it also partakes in the tradition of Greek romances, and of lowbrow theater. Petronius was exalted in his taste and in his literary abilities — even some of the poems in the Satyricon that are meant to be bad are rather good, and his allusive prose is often beautiful, however filthy its meaning.
But he was also fascinated with all things low and decadent, and had an ear for the conversations of the lower classes, which lends the Satyricon much of its glorious variety of tone. One can almost hear the sigh. But it is easy to sympathize with Endres, and with the sage of Rome. Poor Petronius indeed! A century ago this year, it looked as though the old fellow might enjoy a cultural rebirth that never quite came about.
Firebaugh, an English historian and Latinist, produced the translation, which appeared the following year, including various apocrypha which Firebaugh, to his credit, sequestered from the original bits. Soon enough, the volume prompted a high-profile obscenity case when the Society for the Suppression of Vice brought a suit seeking to ban sales of the book.
It would be a serious loss to human knowledge to suppress Petronius. Judge Charles Oberwager agreed, coming down firmly on the side of Petronius when he dismissed the case in late September. The worship of the flesh and its lusts alternately disgusted and fascinated him.
The Society for the Suppression of Vice lost the case, but there was another notable result of the trial: Petronius likely reappeared on F. It was a timely rediscovery. His Latin, by all accounts, was nearly as bad as his Greek. In any case, Fitzgerald that year was beginning notes for The Great Gatsby , while also experiencing much of the high-class decadence that influenced some of its most memorable scenes.
Whatever bits of the Satyricon he read, then, would have presented him with an ancient model for many of the same critiques of elite decadence and cultural decline that appear in his most famous novel, itself set in Myrtle Wilson.
They also emphasize the more ambient Petronian sense of ugly futility that lurks beneath the apparent glitter of both epochs, and the corrupted classes dominant in each. They are served in ostentatiously absurd ways by a bizarre collection of slaves and other functionaries.
The guests grab greedily and unappreciatively, upsetting plates, cups and each other. The talk is gross and unedifying. He fails to see how far he falls short. Clothes, and other props, do not make the man. But there is more to the feast than meets the eye. The vulgarity of the subject matter is especially memorable because it is conveyed by a master satirist or comic genius.
Trimalchio is described with great attention to detail and inventiveness, and with a certain sympathy rather than vindictiveness. Trimalchio and his hangers-on are acquainted with high literature, though they mangle it terribly, sometimes speaking in vulgar Latin and in language rendered comic by its malapropisms and other features. The writer is a virtuoso for pulling off these effects so cleverly.
The key to interpretation is that the text is a satire, as its name implies. It is inspired by the deeds of satyrs : lecherous, half-human creatures of myth, obsessed with sex. They were symbols of the outrageous, the destabilising and the violent. The youths of our tale are plainly modelled on them. The comic silliness of it all is important to consider when pondering the author and purpose of the work. The author, according to the name that has survived with the text, was Titus Petronius Arbiter.
He is generally identified with the prominent courtier of Nero , the senator Gaius Petronius , who was forced to commit suicide in AD 66 for his part in a conspiracy against the emperor. In a famous passage Annals Read more: Mythbusting Ancient Rome — the emperor Nero. This identification between the author of the Satyricon and the Petronius of Tacitus might be right. Roman nobles were highly educated in literature and philosophy. That underscores as much her status as it does the expectations of moral behavior to which her status holds her.
Note, however, that Philomela, desirous of being mentioned in the "will" of Eumolpus, in effect prostitutes her children to him. It will be very short, plain, non-interpretive, and straightforward — a "fact-check" quiz more than anything else to encourage attentive reading and in-class listening. Petronius' Satyricon Quiz 3 Click here to jump to Quiz 3 study guide. We'll split up the reading thus: Petronius 1 read pp.
Petronius 2 read pp. Journal Entries Petronius 1 readings pp. Petronius 2 Readings pp. For the "Widow of Ephesus" story? For a Roman audience For you Study Guide Proper Background Author Petronius died in 66, forced to commit suicide by the emperor Nero, who believed him guilty of plotting his overthrow: "Yet he did not fling away life with precipitate haste, but having made an incision in his veins and then, according to his humor, bound them up, he again opened them, while he conversed with his friends, not in a serious strain or on topics that might win for him the glory of courage.
And he listened to them as they repeated, not thoughts on the immortality of the soul or on the theories of philosophers, but light poetry and playful verses. To some of his slaves he gave liberal presents, a flogging to others. He dined, indulged himself in sleep, that death, though forced on him, might have a natural appearance. Even in his will he did not, as did many in their last moments, flatter Nero or Tigellinus or any other of the men in power.
On the contrary, he described fully the prince's shameful excesses, with the names of his male and female companions and their novelties in debauchery, and sent the account under seal to Nero. Work The work seems to have been entitled Libri Satyricon , or "Books of Satyr-like Escapades" satyrs were the randy horse-man creatures of Greek mythology.
Themes decay in art, literature, morals gender and Roman morals sex death over-consumption other themes??? Characters It will be useful to list some characters' names with loose translations. Thus the names, as in Dickens, mostly convey something about the characters bearing them: The three fratres , or "pals" literally, "brothers" Encolpius "Crotch" , protagonist and narrator.
His pseudonym at Croton is Polyaenos, which assimilates him to Odysseus from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey Ascyltus "Unperturbed" , pal to Encolpius, and rival for the affections of His assistant is Menelaus.
Another freedman with a name of Semitic derivation, he is the caretaker procurator of the apartment block insula where Encolpius and Giton stay before moving on to other shores.
Lichas "Tongue-man"? In mythology, Lichas, the servant of Hercules, participated in killing his master with a poisoned shirt. He was turned into a rock at sea Pannychis. Child attendant of Quartilla, her name means "all night festival. Note that Giton is some sort of former sexual partner of hers Circe , woman of Croton.
Circe is named after the beautiful witch who turns men into pigs in Homer's Odyssey Chrysis "Golden Girl" , Circe's maid, as is Proselenos "she who precedes the Silen [semi-deity of drink and lust]" Oenothea "goddess of the wine" , witch hired to cure Encolpius of impotence Philomela mythological character, Procne's sister, and victim of a rape and silencing punished with child-killing commits lenocinium procuring with respect to her children.
Petronius calls her a matrona inter primas honesta , "a lady nearly unrivaled as to respectability" — ahem. Questions Do you find anything Priapic about this work: its action, etc.? Remember that the plot of the novel seems to have been propelled by some impiety on the part of Encolpius and Ascyltus against the god.
But does Priapus play a symbolic role? How do sexuality and gender figure in? Taken with other evidence, what is your sense now of the ideological vulgate — the shared assumptions and values — through which Roman authors connect with audiences? How would you characterize the relationship of the three fratre s "pals"? What is the moral to the Pergamene Boy story?
What is the moral to the "Widow of Ephesus" story" pp. How does the audience seem variously to interpret the tale? Does the the Satyricon sound the alarm in behalf of the mos maiorum? Or do you see it as something else, maybe a document validating Nussbaum?
Notes p. It was typical to bathe before a dinner party. The translation has, " 'You haven't mentioned all the little bugger's tricks,' broke in Scintilla angrily. Literally, "Scintilla interrupted him as he spoke, and she said, 'Clearly, you aren't describing all the tricks of the nasty slave. He's a catamite agaga , probably meaning a boy used for sex by a man — but the semi-Greek word looks like it could also have meant "pimp" , and I'll make sure he's branded. Trimalchio then confesses he serviced both his master and his master's wife p.
Map pp.
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