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The Satyricon (Meridian classics)

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Petronius's "Satyricon" is, loosely defined, the story of Encolpius's odyssey through the Mediterranean world of the first century AD. Encolpius is a freeman and a scholar, whose distaste for popular culture, and disrespect for other people's privacy leads him into a strange, twisted, sexually disorienting series of misadventures.

The action of the plot commences when Encolpius stumbles upon a secret ritual performed by followers of Priapus, the Roman god of lust. In the context of other ancient novels, I think it is extremely important to note that the god who spurs the hero's wanderings is not Eros, the god of love, but Priapus, a perhaps degenerate form of Eros. Rendered impotent by the angry god, Encolpius begins experiencing external complications as well. Encolpius's lover, the boy Giton, and his best friend Ascyltus get into repeated quarrels over Giton's preference of partner: Encolpius or Ascyltus.

For a mere boy, Giton is presented throughout the "Satyricon" as its most shrewd and interesting character. He lurks on the peripheries of the main action, yet the reader can clearly perceive his manipulative actions, as he takes the side in any argument or dispute of the party most likely to win, switching camps at a moment's notice. In the dissolute moral background of Roman imperial society, Giton is shown to be the best at "doing as the Romans do".

As a curse-born eunuch, Encolpius roams about with Giton and the bombastic, and epically terrible poet Eumolpus, trying to restore himself to full masculinity. Along the way, Petronius presents us with a range of different critiques. The most impressive of these episodic satires is the oft-cited chapter five, "Dinner with Trimalchio". In it, we see a largesse, a gluttony, whose perversions are so outlandish, that we join with Ascyltus in laughing at it, while we secretly revel in its unquestionable splendor.

The excesses of this chapter can be seen as a model for the "Satyricon" itself: conversations begin and end on a whim; like Trimalchio, Petronius as author can be clearly felt in guiding the course of events. Trimalchio's restroom breaks are like those times in the narrative where Petronius himself seems to take breaks from the actual plot, as in Eumolpus's extended and inane epic poem on the Roman civil war. In any event, with all its literary styles, parodic forms, and its stubborn refusal to be simply categorized, the "Satyricon," even fragmentary as it is, is a fabulous text. Although some of the colloquialisms he uses are beginning to show signs of advancing age, William Arrowsmith's translation, almost fifty years after initial publication, is still lively and engaging English for a 21st century crowd.

The Satyricon has reached us in a particularly bad shape, but it is not the only ancient text that makes you wonder whether its author, if he could rise from the dead, would be able to identify his own work from the concoctions of modern scholarship! Often the archetype for our endeavor is already removed from the original script by many centuries, and who knows whether the authorŐs own script had been free of errors. Even on papyrus, to produce a manuscript was slow and costly. Before the invention of the codex, scrolls in some cases could be a heavy and cumbersome affair of 90 ft. in length and up to 30 pounds of weight. Once a column had disappeared in the interior of such scroll, the author would be very reluctant to go through the trouble of unscrolling, if he could help it. So for his cross-references he would rather trust his memory, and of course nobody even considered making an index, because for scrolled material it is practically useless. It makes only sense if you can go between single pages. Worst of all, we look at a book that in all likelihood had never been disseminated very widely. Most copies seem to have been private notes, taken from the text with little regard of context. Since it is a frank and unashamedly lewd text, most copyists, like naughty schoolboys, copied out only the juicy bits for God knows what use. This has saddled the modern reader with a collection of snippets in a very sorry condition, which under-represents the entire text by 90% and over-represents the sex in it by 100%. Of reportedly some 20 books, only portions of book 14, 15, and 16 have survived in loose snippets from all over Europe, but nobody has yet established an undisputed order for all the fragments. For all we know, prior to the surviving part, the story starts at Marseilles. The first person narrator Encolpius, for unknown reasons, had fallen foul of the god Priapus and goes on a quest to regain his errection. He may had been exiled from the city (after a years entertainment at public expense) or ran away from the plague, travels by sea to Italy and at some point is rescued from the gladiatorial arena in Rome. Freeloading and thieving, Encolpius moves down through Italy, until a Tarentine ship owner, Lichas, is attracted to him and picks him up. Encolpius however seduces LichaŐs wife and commits some terrible outrage on his benefactor in the porticus of Hercules at Baiae, a famous pleasure resort in south Italy. He also steals the robe and rattle of the goddess Isis from LichaŐs ship. About the same time, the famous courtesan Tryphaena becomes his mistress in a love triangle between him, her, and the handsome slave Giton. Grown jealous, Encolpius disgraces his mistress in public, and he and Giton gang up with another low life character, Ascyltus. The three are involved in the murder of a certain Lycurgus, rob his villa and saw up the proceeds in a ragged tunic. During a separation, perhaps while stealing an expensive cloak, Encolpius loses the garment with the stolen money inside. Mutual suspicions of dishonesty and jealousy over Giton shake up the trio, before it barges in into some secret Priapean rites conducted by the priestess Quartilla. Finally we find the three in Puteoli and associating as men of culture with a teacher of rhetoric, Agamemnon, who has a school there. It is here, when the surviving text opens in the middle of a discussion of the timeŐs rhetorical education. So, if the condition of the fragments is such a sorry affair, why bother at all? (For the lewd bits we certainly can substitute from our XXXX video stores.) Well, to begin with, the author obviously had been a linguistic genius with an ear for common peopleŐs speech-patterns, which in itself is highly unusual for PetroniusŐs time. For all we know, he seemed to have been an intimate member of the inner circle surrounding the emperor Nero. So all the more unusual, that such a man should care for the language in the streets. Nero together with his drinking companions, is reputed to have roamed the streets and taverns of the capital in dissolute sprees of mayhem, even after his coronation. Sometimes this got the teenage emperor in trouble with the law. If Petronius was a participant in these entertainments, he certainly had had ample opportunity for first hand observations on low life and indeed much of this material found its way into his novel. But it is an unusually rich presentation straddling the entire scale from the vulgar to the mockingly sublime, interspersed with poems and sometimes deliberately bad poetry, and with an uncanny eye for trifles and little sensations. Just notice how the eye follows a drifting bird feather, sinking down to the sea and floating there in narrow circles before being sucked under by the whirling pool of the little waves that dimple the surface - most unusual for practically the entire literature of the period, before and long after. An incredibly rich tapestry unfolds, of local customs, idiosyncratic character traits, the smells and gusto of real peopleŐs life. Tacitus reports, that PetroniusŐs involvement in PisoŐs conspiracy did force him to commit suicide in 65 Ad., but not before he spelled out his true feelings in a last letter to the Emperor. This is probably true. According to Roman custom the public reading of a deceasedŐs will was often used to settle old scores in a piece of unanswerable libel. Considering the enormous length of the novel, PetroniusŐs death may very well have left unfinished this product of a notorious night-owl. What had survived, has found in William Arrowsmith a very able translator - it is a hard act to do, and Arrowsmith gave us as good a rendition as can reasonably be expected.

If you've seen Fellini's "Satyricon" and were utterly mystified by it like I was, it's no use reading Petronius' original to try to sort it out. If fact, it may not be much use reading the Satyricon at all. It is awfully disjointed, having been, I suppose, picked up in pieces of broken parchment off the desert floor. There are only maybe two or three stretches of it that are reasonably coherent, the only great one being "Trimalchio's Dinner," and even that can be obscure without a keen sense of humor, or in my case (being a bit dim) a brilliant and jovial Classics teacher. The reward, if you get it all, is one wonderful chapter of rich, ribald comedy, which you'll remember many years. Of the translations, Arrowsmith's (I've looked at one or two others, while cramming for Latin finals probably) seems to be about the best in flavor--merry, mock-dramatic, wicked--but one or two others are, technically, more accurate.

Petronius' Satyricon is a unique satire on decadence and pleasure. Although the story takes place during Nero's reign, one begins to see that many of the scenes have relevance to today's society and its own debaucheries.

The story follows the adventures of Aschyltus and Encolpio; two rhetoricians who are on an infinite quest for pleasure. Their frienship is challenged by their mutual attraction to Giton, a scoundrelous slave-boy who seems to have more wits and vices than all of the other characters. This triad of debauches is also joined by Emolpus, a trickster and pseudo-intellectual who's always scheming on how he can use his sophistry to hit the jack pot. The most memorable scene in the fragmentary work is Trimalchio's dinner; this chapter surprisingly brings the ancient past closer to modern times in its recital of the characters' casual conversations on money, opportunism, business, and, of course, pleasure.

Although some readers have complained that Arrowsmith's translation isn't faithful to some of the Latin terms, the truth is (as is the case with any other foreign works) that some of the words don't have a counterpart in the English language (or any other modern language.) It is therefore the duty of the translator to use his poetic licence in conjuring the best phrase or sentence that can convey the theme or jist of the statement in question. I personally found this translation the most faithful in trying to convey the type of low-brow humor and puns that Petronius seems to have intended in his work. I strongly recommend this translation above other for that reason.

This is not really a book. There's not enough left of it for that! The only coherent section is "Dinner at Trimalchio's". However, that section is really something. The person who wrote it was a satiric genius. What is interesting is that the ancient Romans were not so different from us. Trimalchio could be a modern businessman, out to impress people with his wealth and culture and his circle of friends are investment banker yuppie types from the 1980's, except in the first century A.D. The whole thing is very funny and very sad. It is also quite vulgar, and the lack of morality in the Roman Empire at this time could also remind you of the lack of morals in current American society. Not only in terms of sex (though no one under 18 should be reading this book) but in terms of common decency, kindness, etc. I would recommend the book to adults, but the reader should be aware that it's disorienting to read, with all the missing sections, if you want to get anything out of it beyond Trimalchio.

P.S. Those who have the patience to read literary criticim will find the discussion of this book in Erich Auerbach's MIMESIS to be very interesting and enlightening. It puts this book in context in our Western culture.

First of all the title. Do not be tempted to believe it comes from the word "satura", meaning medley. Very little of the book survives and no one is in the position to state that the book is a medley of stories. Certainly, if any inferences can be made, they would point the reader in the opposite direction since the story, as we have it so far, follows Encolpius, Ascyltos and Giton throughout. The title is more likely a reference to Satyr tales, a form of early entertainment. This makes a lot more sense, especially when one realizes that Satyrs usually accompanied Dionysus, the god of wine and all around party animal. If you remember that satyrs generally represent the untamed and orgiastic lust for life the book will start to make a lot more sense.

The Satyricon was written in...I guess early late antiquity? (60 AD or so) and apparently very little of it survives intact but the one part that has done so is the one that describes dinner at Trimalchio's house, a dinner which finds some of our protagonists guests at a feast. There is a very good essay on this piece in Erich Aurebach's "Mimesis" entitled "Fortunata" and the serious reader is encouraged to read it :)

The subtitle of "Mimesis" is "The Representation of Reality in Western Literature" and Auerbach picked Petronius' work precisely because the arbiter of style was uncommonly well tuned to the way everyday people acted and talked. Think of him, if you will, as an early Mark Twain or Ricky Gervais and you won't be too far off the mark.

There are numerous reviews of The Satyricon on amazon.com and the majority of them do a perfectly good job of encapsulating the story for you so I won't bother with that job. Instead, I will deal with a certain "Dark Genius" who wrote a horrendous review of this book.

First of all, he refers to Petronius as "Polonius". That's crime numero uno. Second of all, he "was troubled by the translator's numerous admissions at having sacrificed the original Latin for today's English". Even donkey handlers might imagine that certain terms are completely impossible to translate but apparently "Dork Genius" does not. That's crime number two.

He further complains that "The largest whole section describes a banquet held by a rich former slave; the incredible ostentatiousness of the proceedings is matched only by its overtly perverse sexual nature. This text eventually overwhelmed my desire to interpret it as a product of its age. While the jokes are not funny and the satire is too obscure for my true understanding and doubtful appreciation, the constant dirty jokes and sexual references quite sabotaged the story for me."

Good God, there are so many idiotic comments in that paragraph that one might devote voluminous tomes towards dealing with them. "Perverse sexual nature"? Perhaps "Dork Genius" should put down his copy of "George Bush's Faith" (yes he reviewed it and gave it 5 stars) and move beyond a Christian reading of a non Christian work. If the satire is too obscure why is his appreciation for it in doubt? My suggestion would be if it's too obscure, a book on Petronius or Nero would've enlightened him but he's been busy reading Ann Coulter and reviewing her "book" to the tune of 5 stars instead.

Lastly, and this is only because I grow tired of wasting time on this "Dark Genius", the careful reader would have noticed a couple of things right off the bat: When one sees the name of the work, Satyricon, one hopefully realizes that they'll be reading something not at all serious and probably suggestive or sexual in nature. "Dark Genius" does not and as a result breaks Petronius' rule which warns that prudes need not apply as critics.

On the other hand when one comes across a review in which Stephen King's "The Stand" is compared to "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" (yes, "dork genius" actually does this) one should expect an unprecedented amount of stupidity. But what else can one expect from a person who gives "The Ultimate Ric Flair Collection" a five star review and Petronius' Satyricon a two star review? The end of the world perhaps?

Mr. Arrowsmith's translation of The Satyricon is flowing, even throughout, and accompanied by very useful notes. I've read more technically accurate translations of this work, but they sacrifice much because the genre of comedy is dynamic, in the case of Petronius' work also deeply bound up with the language of the time, and a literal translation from one language to another across some two millennia is rarely successful. Arrowsmith explains his liberties with the translation convincingly in his notes, and also with the results of his translation itself. It's a funny book.

I certainly dissent from the opinion of the venerable New York Times. "One of the comic masterpieces in the literature of the Western world" the Satyricon is absolutely not. It is funny, it is a valuable artifact of Nero's Rome, it is an important source of information about life, living and loving in the Rome of Seneca from a viewpoint and genre of literature with which we would be a little less culturally rich had this work not survived at least in part.

Students of antiquity needn't regard this as a primary work in their collection, but this affordable translation of a rollicking comedy of decadence and debauchery is at very least a good tertiary work that just happens to be a humorous read translated masterfully. It is worth the price of a good used book.

After hearing and learning of this book in History 101 (Western Civilzation) I felt I had to run out and read it, and that I did, I couldn't stop reading. A great link to our history from the Silver age.

We're talking of a fragmentary text of a "novel" that's been written almost 2000 years ago. Are we sure we understand it correctly? We know the vulgarity and the flashy mawkishness of Trimalchio... what if for the sensibility of the era it was somewhat amended by religious piety? Is Giton a mere toyboy or a cynical example of opportunistic selfishness? Is Encolpion an image of just punishment for luxury or a hopeless lover? And Eumolpus... obnoxius bad poet, reckless trickster,heredity chaser(a common theme, compare Horatius and Lucian) what of him? Maybe,at the end, Petronius identified whit him, who lived every day of its life as if it's been the last.

Having run across this singular work for the first time, I imagined that it would be as funny as the jacket described and less raunchy than I expected. I was completely wrong. In fairness to the text, it is woefully incomplete, consisting mainly of fragments from some of its later volumes. Some call this the first novel, and it must have been incredibly lengthy in its original state. What we have today is the story of a unwholesome youth who obsesses in his love for his homosexual lover Giton but engages in general ribaldry with all sorts of men (and sometimes even women). At some point in the tale, he is cursed with impotence (although the story never describes conditions of this type in any sort of subdued language) and bewails his constant state of bad luck and persecution while seeking a cure for his condition. Because even this existing text is fragmented, the story is sometimes hard to follow due to gaping holes in the narrative. The largest whole section describes a banquet held by a rich former slave; the incredible ostentatiousness of the proceedings is matched only by its overtly perverse sexual nature. This text eventually overwhelmed my desire to interpret it as a product of its age. While the jokes are not funny and the satire is too obscure for my true understanding and doubtful appreciation, the constant dirty jokes and sexual references quite sabotaged the story for me.

I was troubled by the translator's numerous admissions at having sacrificed the original Latin for today's English. While I understand his desire to make the work readable and understandable to a modern audience, I would much prefer to have a more literal translation--if for no other reason than to know whether the juvenile references contained herein date back to Polonius or to the modern translator. While Rome itself can certainly not be judged by one satirical work, this book does succeed in casting a shadow of immorality on the ancient Romans. I really cannot recommend this book. Even those seeking prurient pleasures and nothing else will be disappointed.