The Satyricon by Petronius Arbiter

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This eBook was produced by Gordon Keener.

The Satyricon
Petronius Arbiter

Translated by William Burnaby
Introduction by C. K. Scott Moncrieff

ON READING PETRONIUS

AN OPEN LETTER TO A YOUNG GENTLEMAN

My dear --------,

On a bright afternoon in summer, when we stand on the high ground
above Saint Andrew's, and look seaward for the Inchcape Rock, we can
discern at first nothing at all, and then, if the day favours us, an
occasional speck of whiteness, lasting no longer than the wave that is
reflecting a ray of sunlight upwards against the indistinguishable
tower. But if we were to climb the hill again after dinner, you would
have something to report. So, in the broad daylights of humanity,
such as that Victorian Age in which you narrowly escaped being (and I
was) born, when the landscape is as clear as on Frith's Derby Day, the
ruined tower of Petronius stands unremarked; it is only when the dark
night of what is called civilisation has gathered that his clear beam
can penetrate the sky. Such a night was the Imperial Age in Rome,
when this book was written; such was the Renaissance Age in Italy,
when the manuscript in which the greater part of what has survived is
only to be found was copied; such, again, was the Age of Louis XIV in
France, of the Restoration, and the equally cynical Revolution in
England, during which this manuscript, by the fortune of war, was
discovered at Trau in Dalmatia, copied, edited, printed, in rapid
succession, at Padua, Paris, Upsala, Leipzig and Amsterdam, and,
lastly, "made English by Mr. Burnaby of the Middle Temple, and another
Hand," all between the years 1650 and 1700; such an Age was
emphatically not the nineteenth century, in which (so far as I know)
the only appearance of Petronius in England was that rendered
necessary--painfully necessary, let us hope, to its translator,
Mr. Kelly,--by the fact that the editors of the Bohn Library aimed at
completeness: but, as emphatically, such is the Age in which you and I
are now endeavouring to live.

_O fortunate nimium_, who were not bred on the Bohn, and feel no
inclination, therefore, to come out in the flesh: were you so foolish
as to ask me for a proof that this Age is not like the last, what more
answer need I give than to point to the edition after edition of
Petronius, text, notes, translation, illustrations, and even a
collotype reproduction of the precious manuscript, that have been
poured out upon us during the last twenty years. But you can
read--and have read, I am sure--a whole multitude of stories in the
newspapers, which are recovering admirably the old frankness in
narration, and have discarded the pose of sermonising rectitude which
led the journalists of a hundred years ago to call things (the names
of which must have been constantly on their lips) "too infamous to be
named"; and from these stories you must have become familiar with the
existence in our country to-day of every one of the types whom you
will discover afresh in Mr. Burnaby's and the "other Hand's" pages.
It is customary to begin with Trimalchio, not that he is the chief, or
even the most interesting figure in the book, but because his is the
type most commonly mentioned in society. To name living examples of
him would be actionable; besides, you are old enough, surely, to
remember the Great War against Germany, and the host of Trimalchiones
and Fortunatae whom it enknighted and endamed. But to go back to
our hill above Saint Andrew's, Wester Pitcorthie yonder was the
birthplace of James, Lord Hay, of Lanley, Viscount Doncaster and Earl
of Carlisle, the favourite of James VI and I, of whom the reverend
historian tells us that "his first favour arose from a most strange
and costly feast which he gave the king. With every fresh advance his
magnificence increased, and the sumptuousness of his repasts seemed in
the eyes of the world to prove him a man made for the highest fortunes
and fit for any rank. As an example of his prodigality and
extravagance, Osborne tells us that he cannot forget one of the
attendants of the king, who, at a feast made by this monster in
excess, 'eat to his single share a whole pye reckoned to my lord at
L10, being composed of ambergris, magisterial of pearl, musk,' etc.
But, perhaps, the most notable instance of his voluptuousness, is the
fact that it was not enough for his ambition that his suppers should
please the taste alone; the eye also must be gratified, and this was
his device. The company was ushered in to a table covered with the
most elegant art and the greatest profusion; all that the
silver-smith, the shewer, the confectioner, or the cook could produce.
While the company was examining and admiring this delicate display,
the viands of course grew cold, and unfit for such choice palates.
The whole, therefore, called the _ante-supper_, was suddenly removed,
and another supper quite hot, and forming the exact duplicate of the
former, was served in its place.

So, in those days as in these, your Trimalchio was ennobled; though,
to do King James justice, he had a string of coronets for his Giton
also. The latter and his companions are still only emerging from a
long period of oblivion in literature and obscurity in life. Like the
pagan deities who have shrunk in peasant mythology to be elves and
pooks and suchlike mannikins, these creatures, banished from the
polite reading of the Victorians, reappeared instantly in that
grotesque microcosm of life which the Victorians invented as an outlet
for one of their tightest repressions, the School Story. I shall not
press the analogy between Lycas and Steerforth, but merely remind you
how, years before you ever heard the name (unless it is mentioned
there) of Petronius Arbiter, you welcomed Giton's acquaintance in the
pages of _Eric, or Little by Little_, where he is known as Wildney,
and painted in the most attractive colours, and were rather bored
whenever old Eumolpus walked into the School Library as Mr. Rose.
Dear old Eumolpus, with his boring culture and shameless chuckle, no
school is complete without him; indeed, I have heard that the
principal scholastic agents keep a section in their lists of
"Appointments Required" headed, for private reference, with his sole
name. Ascyltos is generally the Captain of the XV or XI, sometimes of
both, and represents the unending war of muscle against mind;
Encolpius is, of course, the hero of every school story ever written,
though (to be fair) the authors of most of them have never guessed it.
Agamemnon is the sort of form-master whom it is conventional to rag.
He may have told you already that Petronius is worth reading for its
admirable literary criticism (contained in pages 1 to 4 and 189 and
191 of this volume) and you may have listened, not knowing yet that
literary criticism is rarely admirable, nor suspecting that those are
the pages which most people leave unread. But you are fortunate in
having being born in a generation which is not afraid to say frankly
what it likes, and you will, I imagine, say frankly that you have read
Petronius, and intend to read him again because he tells a rattling
good story, and, unlike certain contemporary novelists whom you are
counselled to admire, tells it about people whose characters and
motives you have no difficulty in understanding.

But all this time I have said nothing to you about Petronius "the
man," as literary critics say, and this, as you may have suspected, is
because I know as little about him as anyone else. You have not long
since laid down your Tacitus: I need do no more than refer you to the
Sixteenth Book of the Annals, where, in the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th
chapters, you will find what is almost the only historical proof of
his existence.

A detailed account of him, which must be divinely inspired since there
is no human material for it, has been made popular in the last
half-century by the author--a foreign gentleman, whose name for the
moment escapes me--of a novel entitled _Quo Vadis_. Fond as he must
have been of oysters, there is no evidence that Petronius ever visited
England, but it should be borne in mind that the law for which he is
generally regarded as showing insufficient respect was not enacted
here until more than eighteen hundred years after his death.
Moreover, suicide, the one offence with which he is definitely
charged, was not in his or his contemporaries' eyes the horrid felony
which, I hope, it will always be in yours. That his work--of which
this volume forms but a fragmentary part--had made its way into this
country, with unusual rapidity, in little more than ten centuries from
its publication, is shown by its being frequently quoted by the
English churchman John of Salisbury, the pupil of Abelard and friend
and biographer of Becket (the Saint, not the boxer), who died (as
Bishop of Chartres) in the year 1180. We may suppose that John took a
copy of the _Satyricon_ home with him from Paris, as undergraduates do
to-day from Oxford and Cambridge. Two and a half centuries later, in
1423 (I owe this display of erudition to Mr. Gaselee's collotype
reproduction of the Trau manuscript), Poggio writes to Niccolo
Niccoli that he has received from Cologne a copy recently ordered by
him, of the fifteenth book of Petronius, and asks his friend to return
the extract from Petronius "which I sent you from Britain." This
last, Mr. Gaselee spiritedly assumes, was the part known as _Cena
Trimalchionis_ (pages 41 to 118 in this volume) from which John of
Salisbury makes three separate quotations, but which is not otherwise
on record before the discovery of what may have been Poggio's own
manuscript (for it also is dated 1423) at Trau in Dalmatia, in the
middle of the seventeenth century.

This manuscript is described as "Fragments from the Fifteenth and
Sixteenth Books of the Satire of Petronius Arbiter"; we may assume,
therefore, that the whole Satire was immensely long, a life-work, like
Marcel Proust's _A la Recherche du Temps Perdu_, and like that work,
perhaps, fatal to its author. Indeed, since Proust's death last year
the two have frequently been compared, and on more than the mere
alliterative ground that is in their names. Of Petronius we are told
"illi dies per somnum, nox officiis et oblectamentis vitae
transigebatur; utque alios industria, ita hunc ignavia ad famam
protulerat, habebaturque non ganeo et profligator, ut plerique sua
haurientium, sed erudito luxu. Ac dicta factaque eius quanto
solutiora et quandam sui negligentiam praeferentia, tanto gratius in
speciem simplicitatis accipiebantur." So far, this describes Proust
also, and the similarity extends to their work. In connexion with
Proust's, one of our youngest critics, your contemporary rather than
mine, raises the question: "how this titanic fragment can be trundled
from age to age," and answers himself with: "_A la Recherche du Temps
Perdu_ is not one of those things which are replaced, like the novel
of the moment, but exactly what part of it is most likely to be saved
the present cannot decide." The better answer is, surely, that, of
Proust as of his fore-runner Petronius, people will keep the things
they like best. There are many pages now in Proust that are
boring--but even now a selected edition for schools and colleges is (I
am told) in the press: there is nothing in the surviving _Satyricon_
that need bring a yawn to the lips of adolescence.

If, as I may suppose, you have planned to translate some at least of
the Greek and Latin classics, you can choose no more handy model than
Mr. Burnaby. He is later, it is true, than the richest and best
examples, but so much the nearer to you in speech. He is not always
scholarly--you can safely leave scholarship to others--but he uses an
excellent colloquial English with a common sense in interpretation
which carries him over the many gaps in the story without any palpable
difference in texture. How fragmentary the latter part of the
_Satyricon_ is you will see if you turn to the edition published last
year in the Loeb Classical Library. The reading of fragments has a
fascination for the curious mind: you also, I think, must have
devoured those casual sheets of forgotten masterpieces in which
book-sellers envelop their parcels, and have dignified the whole with
an importance which it can never when in circulation have enjoyed.
Balzac, you remember, plays on this weakness, which he must have
shared, in _La Muse du Departement_, where the great Lousteau
exasperates a provincial audience, assembled to hear him talk, by
reading to them the inconsequent pages of _Olympia, ou les Vengeances
romaines;_ it is rich comedy, but the fragment carries us away, and at
the beginning of page 209: "robe frola dans le silence. Tout a
coup le cardinal Borborigano parut aux yeux de la duchesse--------" we
exclaim, don't we, with Bianchon: "Le cardinal Borborigano! Par les
clefs du pape, si vous ne m'accordez pas qu'il se trouve une
magnifique creation seulement dans le nom, si vous ne voyez pas
a ces mots: _robe frola dans le silence!_ toute la poesie du
role de _Schedomi_ invente par madame Radcliffe dans _le
Confessional des Penitents noirs_, vous etes indigne de lire des
romans . . ." And these are fragments that have been deliberately
chosen for preservation.

Since it is still safe to assume things, I will go on to suggest to
you that the _Satyricon_ was planned, on the Homeric model, in
twenty-four books, and will leave you to--in the striking words used
recently by _The Times_ of the Japanese earthquake--"grope for
analogies" between the text which follows and the fifteenth and
sixteenth books of the Odyssey, which you have, doubtless, by heart.
But, if I know you at all, you are more likely to be groping for
analogies between the characters in Petronius and those you will come
across in the first months of your new London life. Quartilla you
will hardly escape, or Tryphoena either; Fortunata will pester you
with her invitations, and, if you visit the National Gallery (though I
hear they intend, now, to close it) or the Turkish Baths, you must
beware of Eumolpus: while if the others cross your path by night you
will do well to bear in mind the warning given to an earlier poet by a
greater Roman even than Petronius:

Questi non hanno speranza di morte,
E la lor cieca vita e tanto bassa,
Che invidiosi son d'ogni altra sorte.
Fama di loro il mondo esser non lassa,
Misericordia e giustizia gli sdegna:
Non ragioniam di lor, ma guarda e passa.

On which high note I shall leave you to enjoy the _Satyricon_, and
shall hope to hear from you, presently, what your opinion of it is.

C. K. Scott Moncrieff.

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE HENRY
EARL OF RUMNEY

_Master-General of Their Majesties Ordinance, and of Their Majesties
most Honourable Privy-Council, Constable of Dover-Castle, and Lord
Warden of the Cinque-Ports._

My Lord,

Good men think the meanest friend no more to be dispis'd, than the
politick the meanest enemy; and the generous would be as inquisitive
to discover an unknown esteem for 'em, as the cautious an unknown
hatred: This I say to plead myself into the number of those you know
for your admirers; and that the world may know it, give me leave to
present you with a translation of _Petronius_, and to absolve all my
offences against him, by introducing him into so agreeable company.
You're happy, my Lord, in the most elegant part of his character, in
the gallantry and wit of a polite gentleman, mixt with the observation
and conduct of a man of publik employments; And since all share the
benefit of you,'tis the duty of all to confess their sence of it, I
had almost said, to return, as they cou'd, the favour, and like a true
author, made that my gratitude which may prove your trouble: But what
flatters me most out of the apprehensions of your dislike, is the
gentleman-like pleasantry of the work, where you meet with variety of
ridicule on the subject of _Nero's_ court, an agreeable air of humour
in a ramble through schools, bagnio's temples, and markets; wit and
gallantry in armours, with moral reflections on almost every accident
of humane life. In short, my Lord, I shall be very proud to please a
_Sidney_, an house fertile, of extraordinary genio's, whose every
member deserves his own Sir _Philip_ to celebrate him; whose
characters are romances to the rest of mankind, but real life in his
own family.

_I am, my Lord,_
_Your Lordships most devoted_
_Humble Servant,_
W. BURNABY.

THE PREFACE

The Moors ('tis said) us'd to cast their newborn children into the
sea, and only if they swam would think 'em worth their care; but mine,
with more neglect, I turn into the world, for sink or swim, I have
done all I design'd for't. I have already, with as much satisfaction
as _Aeneas_ in a cloud heard _Dido_ praise him, heard the
_Beaux-Criticks_ condemn this translation before they saw it, and with
as much judgment as if they had: And after they had prophetically
discover'd all the flaws in the turns of thought, the cadence of
periods, and had almost brought in _Epick_ and _Drama_, they supt
their coffee, took snuff, and charitably concluded to send _Briscoe_
the pye-woman to help off with his books. Well, I have nothing to
say, but that these brisk gentlemen that draw without occasion, must
put up without satisfaction.

After the injury of 1700 years, or better, and the several editions in
_Quarto_, _Octavo_, _Duodecimo_, etc., with their respective notes to
little purpose; for these annotators upon matters of no difficulty,
are so tedious, that you can't get rid of their enlargements without
sleeping, but at any real knot are too modest to interrupt any man's
Curiosity in the untying of it. After so many years, I say, it
happened upon the taking of _Belgrade_ this author was _made_ entire;
made so because the new is suspected to be illegitimate: But it has so
many features of the lawful father, that he was at least thought of
when 'twas got. Now the story's made out, the character of _Lycas_
alter'd, and _Petronius_ freed from the imputation of not making
divine or humane justice pursue an ill-spent life.

As to the translation, the other hand, I believe, has been very
careful; but if my part don't satisfie the world, I should be glad to
see my self reveng'd in a better version; and though it may prove no
difficult province to improve what I have done, I shall yet have the
credit of the first attempt.

If any of the fine gentlemen should be angry after they have read it,
as some, to save that trouble, have before; and protest I've yet
debauch't _Petronius_, and robb'd him of his language, his only
purity, I hope we shall shortly be reconciled, for I have some very
pretty new songs ready for the press: If this satisfies them, I'll
venture to tell others that I have drest the meaning of the original
as modestly as I could, but to have quite hid the obscaenity, I
thought, were to invent, not translate.

As for the ladies, if any too-discerning antiquated hypocrite (for
only such I fear) shou'd be angry with the beastly author; let the
work be my advocate, where the little liberties I take, as modestly
betray a broad meaning, as blushing when a man tells the story.

Those who object, that things of this nature ought not to he
translated, must arraign the versions of _Juvenal Suetonius_, etc.,
but what _Suetonius_ thought excusable in _History_, any sober man
will think much more allowable in _Satyr_: Nor can this be offensive
to good-manners, since the gross part here is the displaying of vices
of that dye, that there's an abhorrence even in nature from 'em; nor
is it possible that any ill man can talk a good one into a new frame
or composition; nay, perhaps it may be applicable to a good use, to
see our own happiness, that we know that to be opposite to humanity it
self, which some of the ancients were deluded even to practise as wit
and gallantry, thus I'm so far from being toucht in expressing those
crimes, that I think it makes the more for me, the more they're
detested.

If I have alter'd or added to the author, it was either to render
those customs of the _Romans_ that were analogous to ours, by what was
more familiar to us, or to prevent a note by enlarging on others where
I found 'em.

The verse of both parts are mine, and I have taken a great liberty in
'em; and tho' I believe there I have not wrong'd the original, yet all
will not amount to call them _good_.

The money at first I made _English_ coin, but not the exact worth,
because it would have been odd in some places to have brought in pence
and farthings; as when the thousand sesterces are offered for _Gito_,
it would not be consistent with the haste they were in to offer so
many pounds, so many shillings, and so many pence: I therefore
proportioned a sum to the story without casting up the sesterces; thus
they went to the press: But advis'd either to give the just value or
the _Roman_ coin, I resolv'd on the latter for the reasons I have
given, and alter'd the summs as the proofs came to my hands; but
trusting the care of one sheet to a friend, the summ of 2000 crowns
past unalter'd.

W. B.

THE SATYRICON OF PETRONIUS

THE SATYR OF
TITUS PETRONIUS ARBITER

_With its Fragments, recover'd at Buda_, 1688.

PART ONE

"I promis'd you an account of what befel me, and am now resolv'd to be
as good as my word, being so met to our desires; not only to improve
our learning, but to be merry, and put life in our discourse with
pleasanter tales.

"Fabricius Vejento has already, and that wittily, handled the juggle
of religion, and withal discover'd with what impudence and ignorance
priests pretend to be inspir'd: But are not our wrangling pleaders
possest with the same frenzy? who cant it? These wounds I receiv'd in
defence of your liberty; this eye was lost in your service; lend me a
hand to hand me to my children, for my faltering hams are not able to
support me.

"Yet even this might pass for tolerable, did it put young beginners in
the least way to well-speaking. Whereas now, what with the inordinate
swelling of matter, and the empty ratling of words, they only gain
this, That when they come to appear in publick, they think themselves
in another world. And therefore I look upon the young fry of
collegiates as likely to make the most helpful blockheads, because
they neither hear nor see any thing that is in use among men: But a
company of pirates with their chains on the shoar; tyrants issuing
proclamations to make children kill their fathers; the answers of
oracles in a plague-time, that three or more virgins be sacrific'd to
appease the gods; dainty fine honey-pellets of words, and everything
so said and done, as if it were all spice and garnish.

"Those that are thus bred can no more understand, than those that live
in a kitchin not stink of the grease. Give me, with your favour,
leave to say, 'twas you first lost the good grace of speaking; for
with light idle gingles of words to make sport ye have brought it to
this, That the substance of oratory is become effeminate and sunk.

"Young men were not kept to this way of declaiming when Sophocles and
Euripides influenc'd the age. Nor yet had any blind alley-professor
foil'd their inclinations, when Pindar and the Nine Lyricks durst not
attempt Homer's Numbers: And that I may not bring my authority from
poets, 'tis certain, neither Plato nor Demosthenes ever made it their
practice: A stile one would value, and as I may call it, a chast
oration, is not splatchy nor swoll'n, but rises with a natural beauty.

"This windy and irregular way of babbling came lately out of Asia into
Athens; and having, like some ill planet, blasted the aspiring genius
of their youth, at once corrupted and put a period to all true
eloquence.

"After this, who came up to the height of Thucydides? Who reach'd the
fame of Hyperedes? Nay, there was hardly a verse of a right strain:
But all, as of the same batch, di'd with their author. Painting also
made no better an end, after the boldness of the Egyptians ventur'd to
bring so great an art into a narrower compass."

At this and the like rate my self once declaim'd, when one Agamemnon
made up to us, and looking sharply on him, whom the mob with such
diligence observ'd, he would not suffer me to declaim longer in the
portico, than he had sweated in the school; "But, young man," said he,
"because your discourse is beyond the common apprehension, and, which
is not often seen, that you are a lover of understanding, I won't
deceive you: The masters of these schools are not to blame, who think
it necessary to be mad with mad men: For unless they teach what their
scholars approve, they might, as Cicero says, keep school to
themselves: like flattering smell-feasts, who when they come to great
men's tables study nothing more than what they think may be most
agreeable to the company (as well knowing they shall never obtain what
they would, unless they first spread a net for their bars) so a master
of eloquence, unless fisherman like, he bait his hook with what he
knows the fish will bite at, may wait long enough on the rock without
hopes of catching any thing.

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