Arbiter of elegance: a study of the life and works of C. Petronius

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ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

ARBITER OF ELEGANCE A

STUDY

WORKS

OF OF

BY

THE

BAGNANI

THE

PHOENIX

JOURNAL

OF

THE

ASSOCIATION SUPPLEMENTARY

OF

&

C. PETRONIUS

GILBERT

UNIVERSITY

LIFE

OF

CLASSICAL CANADA VOLUME

TORONTO

II

PRESS: 1954

COMMITTEE

EDITORIAL MARY

E.

WHITE

CHAIRMAN

ROBERT J. GETTY J. WALTER GRAHAM

Copyright, Canada, 1954, and printed in Canada by University of Toronto Press London:

Oxford University Reprinted 1958

Press

TO GILBERT WHOSE ALL IS

APPRECIATION

THAT AN

NORWOOD

IS

BEST

INSPIRATION

AND IN

ENJOYMENT

SIX AND

OF

LITERATURES A

CHALLENGE

PREFACE HAT the best way of understanding any work of art or literature is through the work itself is usually a sound general

rule. All questions concerning the author's identity and life, however interesting and occasionally important, are but ancillary; they are not essential for the appreciation and enjoyment of the work itself. To this general rule the Satiricon is a notable exception. Anyone who reads this fascinating but difficult work with attention will soon find that it is possible to interpret it in many different ways, depending on the view taken of the author's date, purpose, and character. Accept-

ing the prevailing view of the date and authorship, he will nevertheless be startled and shocked by the feebleness and “circularity”? of the arguments used to support it. The following essays are an attempt to answer the questions: When was the Satiricon written? By whom? Why? And, perhaps most important of all, what was the author like? My indebtedness to my predecessors, especially Maiuri and Marmorale, is, I trust, sufficiently acknowledged in the notes, but I should like to express my gratitude to my colleagues in the College and the University for their unfailing help and encouragement, especially to Gilbert Norwood, Mary E. White, J. Walter Graham, R. J.

Getty, L. E. Woodbury, and R. M. H. Shepherd who have all read the manuscript in whole or in part and have made invaluable criticisms and suggestions. I need hardly add that they are not responsible for the views expressed or for errors committed or undetected. I have

also had the advantage of discussing Mr. Freeman Adams of Yale.

the Petronian

stemma

with

My very sincere thanks are also due to Professor Frank E. Brown,

Master of Jonathan Edwards College, and the authorities of the Yale University Library for their delightful and generous hospitality, to' Miss F. G. Halpenny for invaluable editorial assistance, and finally to the Classical Association

of Canada

and the University

Press for doing me the honour of publishing second Supplementary Volume of The Phoenix. University College, Toronto 1954

of Toronto

these essays

as the G. B.

vii

LIST AFP:

OF

ABBREVIATIONS

American Journal of Philology

Ani@i: L’Antiquité Classique BPW; Berliner Philologische Wochenschrift

C:

Codex Iustinianus

CAH: Cambridge Ancient History CIL: Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum Collignon: A. Collignon, Etude sur Pétrone (Paris 1892)

CP:

Classical Philology

C9: Classical Quarterly CR: Classical Review CW: Classical Weekly D: Digesta Iustiniani FHG: Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum GLK: Grammatici Latini, ed. Keil H: Codex Traguriensis, Parisinus 7989

(Müller)

HSCP: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 11: Inscriptiones Italiae ILS:

Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (Dessau)

FRS:

Journal of Roman Studies

Lud.:

Ludus de morte Claudii, quoted from the edition by Carlo F. Russo, £L. dunaei Senecae Divi Claudii! Ἀποκολοκύντωσις, Biblioteca di Studi Superiori, Filologia Latina III (Florence 1948) Maiuri, Cena: A. Maiuri, La Cena di Trimalchione (Naples 1945) Maiuri, Petroniana: A. Maiuri, Petrontana, PP 3 (1948) 101-128 Marmorale, Cena: E. V. Marmorale, Petronii Arbitri Cena Trimalchionis, Biblioteca di Studi Superiori, Filologia Latina I (Florence

1947) Marmorale, Questione: E. V. Marmorale, La Questione Petroniana (Bari 1948) Momigliano: Α. Momigliano, "Literary Chronology of the Neronian

Age," C9 38 (1944) 96-100 N7bs: Neue Jahrbücher für das klassische Altertum NRHD: Nouvelle Revue historique de droit frangais et étranger PIR:

Prosopographia Imperii Romani IX

x

LIST

PP:

OF

ABBREVIATIONS

La Parola del Passato

RBPh: RE:

Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire Pauly-Wissowa,

Real-Encyclopádie

der classischen

Altertums-

wissenschaft RendLinc: Rendiconti della R. Accademia dei Lincei ReoPhil: Revue de Philologie

RFIC:

Rivista di Filologia e d'Istruzione Classica

RHD: Revue historique de droit frangais et étranger RAM: Rheinisches Museum Russo: C. F. Russo's introduction and notes to Lud. Sage: Petronius, The Satiricon, edited with introduction and notes by Evan T. Sage (New York 1929) Sat.: Petronti Satiricon; if not otherwise stated references are to the text edited by A. Ernout (3rd ed., Paris, Budé, 1950)

Stal: Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica TAPA: Transactions of the American Philological Association Toynbee: J. M. C. Toynbee, "Nero Artifex: Reconsidered," C9 36 (1942) 83-93 WS: Wiener Studien

ZSS:

The

/fpocolocyntosis

Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung, Romanistische Abteilung

CONTENTS PREFACE LIST

OF

ABBREVIATIONS

The Date and Authorship of the Sariricon The Date, Purpose, and Authorship of the Ludus de morte Claudii “Gay Petronius"

EXCURSUSES I II

On "vulgar" Latin On Roman

propaganda literature

HI

The Senate of the Gods

IV

The language of the Ludus and of the Satiricon

V_

Pope and Petronius

VI

Pontia the Poisoner INDEX

LOCORUM

xi

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

THE

DATE OF

AND

THE

AUTHORSHIP

SATIRICON

Notes upon books outdo the books themselves. J. BaAMsTON

HE present state of the "Petronius Question" can only be described as unsatisfactory. Though "the accepted date and authorship are likely to remain in favour," we are constantly being reminded that these assumptions “are only presumptive, not

proved." It is characteristic of the unsatisfactory state of the question that the very same passage has been used to prove that the Satiricon

was

written

after

Commodus,

and

to prove

that

it was

written

under Nero. In Chapter 57, Hermeros, reaching the bellicose state of intoxication rather sooner than the others, looks round to find someone

with whom to quarrel and, lighting on Ascyltos, lets out a torrent of Billingsgate. Amongst other endearments he says: egeus Romanus es?

et ego regis filius. E. V. Marmorale? assumes that Ascyltos is wearing the equestrian gold ring (cf. 58. 10), and that Hermeros consequently believes him to be really a knight. Since this is obviously impossible, Marmorale argues that Ascyltos must have received the tus anuli aurei by imperial decree as a concession of ingenuizias, a practice that becomes general only after Commodus. On the other hand, A. Momigliano*, reviving a suggestion of N. Heinsius, sees in ef ego regis filius an oblique reference to Pallas who, regióus Arcadiae ortus, veterrimam nobilitatem usui publico postponeret, seque. inter ministros principis haberi sineret? He considers this an argument "which alone is sufficient to date Petronius in the Neronian time" and adds: “the allusion could not be understood—and would no longer be interesting—after Nero."

The difficulties and contradictions implicit in Marmorale's theory have

been

effectively

examined

by

numerous

scholars,

including

1J. Whatmough, CP 44 (1949) 274, reviewing Marmorale, Questione: cf. W. Suess, Gnomon

23 (1951) 312-317,

and A. Ernout, RevPAi/ 24 (1950)

?Marmorale, Questione 317-323. *'Burman, Satyricon? (Amsterdam

1745) 1. 372.

3

120.

*Momigliano, 100. VTacitus, 4nn. 12. 53.

4

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

Maiuri? and R. Browning,’ but even the last-mentioned assumes that Hermeros believes Ascyltos to be a knight. Now it is quite obvious, as Sedgwick rightly pointed out,* that the whole passage cannot be taken seriously. Hermeros is not deceived by the anuli £uxei, and, as “ἃ self-made man and proud of it," an inverted snob, he is the last person on earth to advance spurious claims to gentility. He advances a

preposterous and obviously false claim to royal blood to beat Ascyltos' even more preposterous and obviously false claim to equestrian rank. “If you're a Roman knight, well then, I’m a King's son!” [t is just a part of that ritual of abuse used in only slightly different forms semper, ubique et ab omnibus. 'There is a story that a certain gentleman, strolling with the late Lord Curzon, stopped to talk to an old family retainer, the widow of a sergeant-major in the Indian Army. Life in India having been mentioned, Curzon chipped in with: "That must have been when I was Viceroy." Whereupon the old lady countered with "Ye was, was ye? Well, me 'usband, 'e was Commander-inChief, 'e was!" An allusion to Pallas is possible only if the Satiricon was written in the time of Nero; otherwise it might just as well be an allusion to Maecenas or, indeed, to anyone else. Throughout the whole course of the Empire there must have arrived in Rome every vear a host of “aliens” who could claim—frequently with perfect truth—that their **birth, beyond all questions, springs From great and noble, though forgotten, kings."? The different interpretations of this one short passage illustrate the exceptional importance of the^problem of the

date and authorship

for the full understanding

of the work

itself.

It is obviously full of allusions, but their interpretation depends entirely on the precise dating of the work; they cannot be used to date it. If we can prove that the Satiricon was written for the amuseS Petroniana 101-128. 8W. B. Sedgwick, The Cena

Trimalchionis? (Oxford

1950)

"CR 63 (1949) 12. 115. A salutary warning

that one must not take any statement of Petronius too seriously had been issued by A. D. Nock, CR 46 (1932) 173.

*Though Charles Churchill’s Prophecy of Famine was published early in 1763, these lines (273-274) are directed against the Scots in general, not against Lord Bute in particular, and still less against Boswell, even though the latter arrived in London that very year, and on one occasion characteristically informed George III that he

was the Pretender's cousin in the seventh early

Empire

minor German regibus,

seems

to

have

attributed

degree as much

(Malahide

court. Besides the claim that Maecenas

a royal pedigree was

also provided

Papers

importance

for Nero's

16. 101). The

to quarterings

as

a

and Pallas were atavis editi concubine

28. 1), while the Vitellii were given a descent from Faunus, (Suet., Fiteli. 1. 2).

Acte

(Suet.,

Nero

King of the Aborigines

THE

SATIRICON

5

ment of Nero's court, then the ego regis filius may have been intended as an allusion to Pallas, or, more probably, may have been taken by some contemporary readers as an allusion to Pallas, but it is perfectly comprehensible without any such allusion. The sentence with which Trimalchio ends his epitaph (71. 12), mec unquam philosophum audivit, is a perfectly good &outade and need not be anything more.

But if the Satiricon was written for the entertainment of Nero at a

time when Seneca was falling from favour, we can easily suppose that the author hoped that the Emperor, on reading the passage, might exclaim, "Lucky fellow! I wish I could say as much!" Nothing is more subjective than the interpretation of an author's allusions. When Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his Son were published in 1774 the description of the “respectable Hottentot’* was almost universally understood as a reference to Johnson, and it undoubtedly

fits Johnson better than any allusions in the Sasricon fit their alleged prototypes. But everyone is now agreed that the allusion is to Lyttelton, and Birkbeck Hill points out that, had the letter been published when it was written and not twenty-three years later, an allusion to Johnson would never have been suspected.! The explanation of the allusions in the Satiricon depends entirely on the date; to use them as an element of dating is to argue in a circle. The most that can be said

is that no historical or literary allusion has been found that is hopelessly inconsistent with an early date, and the. same can be said of the proper names; but this can hardly be used as a conclusive proof that the work was written during the first century, and still less that it was

written in the time of Nero.” The precise dating of the work itself is also the only way by which we can identify the author. There is no direct evidence whatsoever to connect the author with the Petronius of Tacitus. The facts are clear and not in dispute. The late authors and MSS that mention our

author call him indifferently Petronius, Arbiter, or Petronius Arbiter, Letter 1685).

to his son

of 28

February

O.S.

1751

(Letters,

ed.

Bonamy

Dobrée,

4,

s Doswell Life of Johnson, ed. Hill-Powell, 1. 267, n. 2. 1?Most of the alleged allusions have been effectively examined and criticized by Marmorale, Questione 63-104. He convincingly refutes, 99 L. Herrmann's attempt in

AntC? 11 (1942) 87-89 to place the Cena in A.D. 34: there is not the slightest reason to suppose that Scaurus, Pompeius, and others mentioned are historical or even real persons. Recent attempts at allusion-hunting, equally ingenious and unconvincing, are those of P. Grimal, RevPAi/ 16 (1942) 161-168, and of Richard H. Crum, CW 45 (1952) 161-170. Trimalchio's second cognomen Maecenatianus does not necessarily indicate that he had been a slave of Maecenas; H. W. Haley, HSCP 2 (1891) 13.

6

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

and obviously consider Arbiter to be his regular cognomen. From the account of Tacitus? it is equally obvious that Arbiter Elegantiarum was an appellation or nickname given by Society or by Tacitus himself to Nero's favourite, and was not a formal cognomen. Tacitus implies

that Petronius had no cognomen. Two explanations of these facts are equally possible, indeed equally plausible: that later authors turned the nickname

into a cognomen, or that the descendants of Petronius

adopted the nickname as the regular cognomen of their branch of the gens Petronia. In the present state of our knowledge

what

must

be

avoided is the usual circular argument: that since it was written by the Petronius of Tacitus the Satiricon was written in the time of Nero, and that since it was written in the time of Nero it must have been written by the Petronius of Tacitus. If it can be proved by conclusive internal evidence, without any reference to the name of the author, that the work must have been written between A.D. 55 and 65 there can be no reasonable doubt that

it was written by the Petronius of Tacitus. And thus we return once more to the essential question: the precise dating of the work itself by internal evidence alone. *

An absolute /erminus ante quem and post quem are easily fixed. Maiuri has rightly pointed out that malui civis Romanus esse quam tributarius (57. 4) would be meaningless after the Constitutio Antoni-

niana of A.D. 212," which is therefore an absolute terminus. The first author to quote the "Arbiter" is Terentianus Maurus, whose date, however, is only slightly less uncertain than that of Petronius himself, though most scholars are now agreed in placing his activity towards the end of the second century.!? His statement that people in his own day were in the habit of singing the songs of Petronius has been used as an argument that Terentianus and Petronius were contemporaries.!? It can, of course, be interpreted this way, but let us remember that WU fnn

16.

17: inter

paucos

familiarium

Neroni

adsumptus

est, elegantiae arbiter...

(and cf. infra 49, n. 13). MMaiuri, Petroniana 127. In dealing with this point Marmorale, Questione 324-325, is more than usually unconvincing. I shall forbear discussing the long controversy started by U. E. Paoli, "L'Età dei Satyricon,” $/774/ 14 (1937) 3-46. Since there is no reason whatever to see in Sai. 70. 10 a case of manumissio per mensam (it is

clearly contradicted

by the fact that Trimalchio intends to manumit

all his slaves

testamento, 71. 1), cadit quaestio: cf. R. Henrion, RBPA 22 (1943) 198. “De Metris 2489 (GLK 6. 399) "Arbiter"; and 2852 (ἰδία, 6. 409) "Petronius."

Schanz-Hosius, Gesch. d. Rom. Lit. 3* (Munich 1922) 27. VMarmorale, Questione 290-291: cf. Schanz-Hosius, Joc. cit.

THE

SATIRICON

7

Addison heard Venetian gondoliers sing the songs of Tasso, and that we ourselves’ solemus cantare—or whistle—both the latest musical and the songs of Shakespeare and Jonson.! An equally definite terminus a quo is given by the simple consideration that, though the cognomen Arbiter could be borne by any descendant of the Petronius of Tacitus, it could not possibly be borne by anyone earlier. And therefore the work itself, though it may be later than the time of Nero, cannot possibly be earlier. This terminus is confirmed and rendered more precise by the close relationship between Petronius and the younger Seneca and Lucan,?? a relationship

that is quite undeniable, but that may be explained in various ways. Petronius may be consciously and deliberately imitating, criticizing, and parodying Seneca; on the other hand he may be a contemporary,

moving in the same or a similar circle, influenced by the same ideas and ideals, and drawing his material from the same common stock. For example: the parallel between Trimalchio and the Calvisius Sabinus, described by Seneca in Ep. ad Luc. 27, is extremely close and

can hardly be fortuitous,?? but it is equally explicable on the supposition that Petronius developed and expanded Seneca's charactersketch, or on the supposition that he too was acquainted with Calvisius

and drew from life, without any knowledge of Seneca's letter. We cannot therefore maintain that the Sa/iricom must necessarily have been written after the publication of the Letters to Lucilius. The same considerations apply to the undoubtedly close relationship

with Lucan.? It is quite possible to argue that Petronius! de Bello Civili is a satire on or a parody of Lucan's poem. On the other hand it is equally

arguable

that

Eumolpus

is genuinely

expounding

the

theories of Petronius on how an epic poem should be written. In this case it is unnecessary

to suppose

that Petronius

knew the whole of

Lucan's poem, or even the first book. It would be enough for him to know

that

Lucan

was

planning

an

epic poem

on

and the Senecan coterie will have put out a good publicity—and to have sufficient. knowledge of boy's" style to form a pretty shrewd idea of what likely to get. A certain connexion has been pointed 18The

attempt

to prove

that Terentianus

novelli (E. Castorina in Giorn. it. di Filología

considers

the

Civil War—

deal of advance "the wonderful the public was out between the

Petronius one of the poctae

1. 213) is wholly unconvincing.

13Colignon, 149-165 and 291-311; Maiuri, Cena 17-24; Marmorale, Questione 224-235. ? NM aiuri, Cena 19. 4Collignon, 149-226; H. Stubbe, “Die Verseinlagen im Petron" Philologus, Suppl. 25, 2 (1933) 67-151; a summary of the various theories in Sage, 207.

ARBITER

8

OF ELEGANCE

first lines of the two poems.? This does not necessarily prove that the Satiricon was written after A.p. 60 when Lucan published his first book. Parts of Lucan's poem may have been read in Seneca's salon before publication; it is not inconceivable that Lucan may have admired the sidus conceit and borrowed it from Petronius and not vice versa; and finally both poets may have independently made use

of a fashionable conceit. The only positive statement we can make is that the Satiricon must have been written after Lucan was known to be engaged on an epic poem on the Civil War, 1.e., not earlier than ca. A.D. 58. To resume: Petronius is contemporary with, or later than, Seneca and Lucan, and contemporary with, or earlier than, Terentianus Maurus, and the Satiricon cannot have been written before a.p. 58

or after A.p. 212. Is it possible to reduce these limits still further? *

We have already seen that up till now all attempts to fix a definite

date by explaining the allusions have been subjective and based only too frequently on circular reasoning. The same can be said of the endless discussions of Petronius' alleged literary theories, especially of the interpretation of the opening dialogue between Encolpius and Agamemnon (1-5). A. D. Nock has rightly pointed out the danger of

taking the passage as a serious contribution

to the question.” Pet.

ronius' main object may well be to poke fun at the stock controversies

between the different schools of rhetoric and to parody the stock arguments that were now centuries old. In this case the famous nuper? of 2. 7—nuper

ventosa istaec et enormis loquacitas Athenas ex

Asia commigravit—may represent the translation of an early Hellenistic or even fourth-century original when the statement was literally true. "R. J. Getty, CP 46 (1951) 29. SThough, as Momigliano, 97, points out, Miss Toynbee's the passage in Suetonius is open to doubt, the fact is not.

interpretation,

87, of

*Collignon, 63-108; Marmorale, Questione 275-286; Sage, 207; E. Paratore, Satyricon (Florence 1933) 2. 1-24; L. Alfonsi, RFIC, N.S., 26 (1948) 46-53, "SCR 46 (1932) 173, pointing out the close connexion between this passage

J/ of

Petronius and Philo, de Plantatione 157-159. *Collignon, 83; Marmorale, Questione 284-286. Sage, 146, rightly suspected that "Petronius was following some Greek source and failed to remove the evidence.”

If, however, the whole passage is a deliberate parody of stock arguments, the failure is intentional.

THE

SATIRICON

9

The investigation of the Latinity of Petronius," a happy hunting ground for philologists, lexicographers, and candidates for the Ph.D., leads to a dead end as far as dating the work is concerned. We know too little to be able to date "vulgar" Latin. It is only through an accident that the closest parallels with the language of Petronius are furnished by the Ludus de morte Claudii and the Pompeian graffiti, that is to say by documents dating between a.p. 55 and 79. And even if our material were far more extensive than it is, it is an open question whether we could date it with any degree of approximation. A spoken language or dialect usually changes much more slowly

than the literary dialect, which is immediately affected by literary fashions or by the example of an influential author. The difference between the literary Italian of Boccaccio—or, for that matter, even of Manzoni—and the modern literary Italian of, say, Malaparte or Moravia, is enormous: but when Boccaccio reproduces the spoken Tuscan of his own time in the mouths of comic characters such as Calandrino and Buffalmacco it is not very different, wit included, from the language spoken today by Tuscan peasants. The most cursory glance at Hofmann's Umgangssprache shows that Petronius shares

many peculiarities with Plautus, many others with the author of the Peregrinatio Aetheriae, and many with both. Even if all Marmorale's philological

arguments

in favour of a late dating

were sound,

they

would prove only that the Satiricon might have been written at the end of the second century, not that it was. What renders the question so peculiarly difhcult is that we cannot be quite certain that Petronius 1s ever wholly serious. The first line of the schedium Lucilianae humilitatis (5. 1) is given by practically all the MSS as artis severae si quis amat effectus and practically all modern editors, except Sage, emend the aat to ambit. Marmorale maintains the reading of the MSS and sees in the false quantity a proof that Petronius was writing at a time when the

feeling for quantity was lost.?® Now, the merit of Petronius as a poet

may be a matter of opinion, but that he is a competent versifier is not; and to find a time when even a schoolboy poetaster did not know, or might forget, the quantity of the first syllable of amare, the most overworked verb in the whole of a poet's vocabulary, we should have 27There is a summary of the question and a fairly complete bibliography in Marmorale, Questione 124-223, but cf. Excursus I. 28Marmorale, Questione 292.

10

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

to go to the darkest of the Dark Ages. If the text is sound the false quantity is intentional, and what both Marmorale and the editors forget is that the schedium is a parody of Lucilius. It is also incredibly bad: nowhere else is Petronius guilty of such really appalling doggerel.

The conclusion is obvious: Petronius has a low opinion of Lucilius as a poet. Horace's remark that the verses of Lucilius were duri (5. 1. 4. 8),

and that they ran zzcomposito pede (5. 1. 10. 1), is merely a polite way of saying that they frequently did not scan. And we know from if not Horatian,

the eight verses prefixed to this tenth Satire— which,

are probably ancient— that old editors of Lucilius, like modern editors of Petronius, were given to emendation. Petronius, wishing to parody Lucilius,

deliberately

introduces

a false

quantity,

to make

and,

the

point perfectly obvious to the meanest intelligence, makes the blunder in the very first line with the most familiar of all verbs. If the Aorti Pompeiani of 53. 5 are to be understood as “the farms at Pompeii," the Satiricon could be dated with certainty before the erup-

tion of 4.p. 79, for Maiuri's argument?? that the area round Vesuvius cannot have been cultivated for over a century after the eruption is quite unanswerable. Unfortunately one cannot exclude the interpretation "the farms of Pompeius," on the analogy of Hort Sa//ustiani, etc. To ask who then can this Pompeius be, is quite beside the point; agreed that it cannot be Trimalchio's patron, but Pompeius is a common zomen throughout the Empire, and there is no reason whatever to suppose that any particular Pompeius is meant.

The hypothesis of a late second-century date can be excluded with certainty, not by considering this or that detail, but by observing the entire and perfectly consistent picture given in the Sattricon of

contemporary life and manners, and of social and economic conditions. The perusal of any Handbook of Private Antiquities—Marquardt, Blümner, Friedlander, Carcopino—is enough to convince an unbiased reader that the Satiricon reflects the manners and customs of the first century. Marmorale has sought to meet this objection by quoting parallels from the Historia /Jugusta.! Now it is quite obvious that, Or that Horace and his contemporaries were unable to scan them, even as the English Augustans were unable to scan Chaucer or Donne. Lucilius might have answered

in the words

G. Suess, "Petronii B13,

1 (Dorpat

of Alfieri, son duri, duri, disaccentati?

...

imitatio sermonis plebei," Acta et Comment.

non

son cantati!

Unie.

Tartuensis,

1927) rightly points out the close dependence of Petronius on Luc-

ilius, but this does not mean that Petronius necessarily admired him. Cena

186; Petroniana

HQuestione 297-313;

110-112.

for a discussion of the problem

S. Mazzarino, Aspetti Sociali del Quarto

Secolo (Roma

of the Historia Augusta see 1941) 345-370.

THE

SATIRICON

il

whatever view we take of the value of the Historia Augusta as a record of historical events, it is entirely valueless as evidence for the mores of the second or early third century—though it may possibly have considerable value as evidence for those of the late fourth or early fifth. To prove that the Satiricon reflects the social and economic conditions of the first century of the Empire would involve writing still another book on Roman life.® But, besides the arguments advanced by so many others, I should like to stress a few that seem to me quite decisive. In the Graeca urbs the municipal magistracies are flourishing and the leading men of the town are straining every nerve, and spending a great deal of money, in order to get elected.? By a.p. 180 they would have been working even harder to avoid by every means in their power election to municipal office. Nor is there any trace in the Satiricon of those great corporations and collegia that from the middle of the second century on are so important a part of the economic life of che Empire, and this in a city which, whether it be Puteoli or not, is certainly intended to represent an important commercial

city of Campania. The complete absence of any religious feeling in Petronius has often been pointed out, and is indeed one of his most obvious characteristics.

He pokes more or less good-humoured fun at astrology and divina®The close connexion between manners and customs as depicted in the Cena and the life of Pompeii and Herculaneum has been admirably brought out in Maiuri, Cena. If 53. 3, Mithridates serus in crucem actus est, quia Gai nostri genio male dixerat, could be taken seriously, the date of the work

would

be earlier than Hadrian,

who

seems to have forbidden masters to put slaves to death arditrio (Mommsen, Strafrecht 617; W. W. Buckland, Law of Slavery [Cambridge 1908] 37; F. Schulz, Prin. ciples of Roman Law (Oxford 1936] 220—though we should like to have better evidence of the fact than the Historia Augusta). lt would be dangerous, however, to stress this point since the whole episode of the recitation of the Acta is farcical in the extreme. 33Sat. 45. 10 (Echion): subolfacio quia nobis epulum daturus est Mammaea, binos denarios mihi et meis, WThe case for Puteoli has been excellently put by Maiuri, Cena 5-14 and Petroniana 106-108; contra, Marmorale, Questione 117-133, Paratore, and Paideia 3 (1948) 265. I do not believe with Paratore

77 Satyricon 1. 179-211 that the Graeca urbs is

imaginary nor with Maiuri that the name was deliberately concealed. If the Satiricon was written in the time of Nero, the identification with Puteoli is highly probable since it is still the most important town of Campania, but it is impossible to identify the city with such certainty as to date the work itself. Moreover Cumae is excluded only on the basis of Trimalchio's reference to it in 48. 8, and it seems to me extremely

difficult to take this as a reference to the Italian Cumae. Either he is referring to the Aeolic

Cumae

(so

Marmorale,

Cena

78),

or,

more

probably,

the

text

is corrupt.

ARBITER

12

OF

ELEGANCE

tion,5 omens and prodigies,* ghosts and were-wolves. He obviously considers mysticism and mystery religions an outlet for wealthy nymphomaniacs.

Philosophy does not come off much better; certainly

Trimalchio's Epicureanism is hardly a recommendation for the school. Nor is Petronius merely disapproving of religious innovations or aberrations; the old Roman

religion is laughed at with equal impar-

tiality.? The picture of the good old days when ‘‘our great ladies went up the hill to the Temple of Jupiter in their best clothes, their feet bare, their hair loose, their thoughts pure, to pray for rain. And of course down it came at once in buckets—if that didn’t do it,

what would?—and everyone went home like drowned rats,"** is one of the best things in the whole book, but its creator can hardly be considered an enthusiastic supporter of the Augustan religious programme.

Personally I find it most unfortunate that this passage comes to my mind when looking at the Ara Pacis. Such

indifference

to religion

is hardly

conceivable

invariably

at any

period

after the accession of Hadrian, when even scepticism, as in Lucian, becomes militant and doctrinaire. The author who most resembles Petronius is certainly Apuleius, but the close formal resemblance between the two works*?—both picaresque novels with a considerable amount

of obscenity—must

not

blind

us

to

their

essential,

their

fundamental difference. Apuleius’ novel is a profoundly moral work, a kind of Divine Comedy, the regeneration of sinful man through Isis and her mysteries. Petronius’ "heroes" are quite definitely unregenerate and their creator quite obviously wants to keep them that way. If one of the main threads of the novel is the loss and re-

covery by Encolpius of his virility,*9it is a metamorphosis very different J, G. W. M. De Vreese, Petron 39 und die Astrologie (Amsterdam 1927), has greatly elucidated these passages, but has made the fundamental mistake of taking them seriously, «f. infra 58, n. 52. %It is enough to compare the point of view of Petronius in such matters with that of Dio

Cassius, a highly educated

contemporaries. "'Contempt

Senator,

to exclude

the possibility of their being

Cf. M. A. Levi, Nerone e i suoi tempi (Milan 1949) 219. for the official religion

is even

more

marked

in the

Ludus

de morte

Claudii; Collignon, 28. Sat. 44. 18: antea stolatae ibant nudis pedibus in clivum, passis capillis, mentibus puris, εἰ Iovem aquam exorabant. itaque statim urceatim plovebat—aut tunc, aut nunquam—et omnes redibant udi tanquam mures (redibant udi, Jacobs, Bücheler, Maiuri; ridebant udi, Sage, Ernout, Terzaghi; ridedant uvidi, Marmorale; ridebant ut dii, H). " Collignon, 40-46; Marmorale, Questione 247-262. *C. Marchesi, Petronio (Milan 1940) 41-42. The same considerations apply to the

generally accepted theory that the plot of the novel is the Wrath of Priapus. Far too little is left of the work to allow us to consider the various attempts at reconstruct-

THE

SATIRICON

13

from Lucius's. When Apuleius digresses we get the masterpiece of Cupid and Psyche: when Petronius digresses we get the Pergamene Boy and the'Matron of Ephesus, also masterpieces, but of a very different kind. Fulgentius himself would find it hard to interpret the Satiricon allegorically, and, if Petronius is a ^Moralist,"* he is a moralist of a very peculiar type, certainly not the Johnsonian. Even though we can unhesitatingly affirm that the Satiricon reflects the mores of the first century, it does not follow that it reflects

those of the time of Nero, still less that the problems of the date and authorship are solved, as most commentators directly or indirectly imply. Manners and customs change with every decade. Johnson

once

rightly

"observed,

that

all works

which

describe

manners,

require notes in sixty or seventy years, or less";? and if manners had changed so greatly in sixty years as to render much of The Spectator unintelligible in 1773, we can assume that there must have been an at least equal change of manners between the time of Claudius and that of Nerva. Unfortunately we know too little about the details of Roman life to do more than date by centuries, and though the Satiricon reflects the manners of the first century, we cannot say whether it reflects the early, the middle, or the final decades. Admittedly the

general impression would seem to favour a Julio-Claudian rather than a Flavian date, but this is a merely subjective impression. The luxury of Trimalchio would appear to be pre-Flavian, but Tacitus’ claim that the Flavian was an age of almost "Victorian" respectability after the excesses of the Julio-Claudians,* is hardly borne out by Juvenal and Martial, who, more than any other authors, are a commentator's

seconds in his duel with the text of the Safiricon. It is true that Encolpius seems to take it for granted that, in a case of disputed possession, the interdictal procedure will be followed,“ and Frontinus has been cited as proving that, by the Flavian period, this cumbersome procedure was avoided as much as possible. But our text of Frontinus ing the plot as anything more than exercises in ingenuity. From fr. 4 it seems probable—though not certain—that part of the action took place in Massilia, but the Memphitides puellae of fr. 19 are no kind of proof that anything took place in

Egypt. 1G, Highet, "Petronius the Moralist,"

T4PA

72 (1941) 176-194.

“Boswell, Life, 3 April 1773 (ed. Hill-Powell, 2. 212). “Sat. 13. 4: fure civili dimicandum, ut si nollent alienam interdictum venirent.

9 Ann. 3. 55. rem domino reddere, ad

5F. Schulz, Classical Roman Law (Oxford 1951) 62, quoting an alleged statement of Frontinus: magna alea est ad interdictum deducere, cuius est executio perplexissima.

But this sentence is to be found not in Frontinus, but in Agennius Urbicus (Corpus

14

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

is in a most unsatisfactory state—it may well have been interpolated— and in any case Frontinus is referring to immovables and not to utrubi, the only one of the possessory interdicts applicable to the case of the cloak. Tt would be easy to advance a theory that the Satiricon was written in the first decade of the second century by some descendant of the original Arbiter in order to satirize Domitianic society. Such a

theory would explain the close relationship between Petronius on the one

hand

and

Juvenal,

Martial,

Quintilian,

Statius,

and

on

Tacitus

the other, without postulating any conscious borrowing one from another. In such a case Tacitus would have presumably based his

detailed account of the death of the Arbiter—with an oblique explanation of the origin of the cogzomen—on a couple of letters written to him by, say, a grand-nephew, one of his literary friends. The amphitheatre at Puteoli is the new Flavian one, and Ganymedes' lament on the decay of the city (44) genuinely reflects the decay of Campania

under the Flavians, and is not the typical grouse of a typical laudator lemporis acti.

To resume: we can now say that the Satiricon cannot have been written before A.p. 58 at the earliest, nor after about a.p. 118 at the

latest. Can these limits be reduced still further? Can proof be found that will conclusively assign the work to one of these six decades? The road

leading to this goal is strewn with the warning bones of my predecessors,

but

audaces

fortuna

iuvat:

let's

try

a g ain!

*

Echion, the rag-and-bone man, in enumerating the attractions of the coming games, mentions specifically (45. 7-8) dispensatorem Glyconis, qui deprehensus est cum dominam suam delectaretur. videbis populi rixam inter zelotypos et amasiunculos. Glyco autem, sestertiarius homo, dispensatorem ad bestias dedit. It is clear from this that Glyco

used his absolute power of life and death over his slaves to be revenged on his steward, and that he was legally entitled to do so, even though a considerable section of public opinion was against him. This absolute Agrimensorum

Romanorum,

ed. C. Thulin

(Leipzig

1913]

1. 1. 34, lines 2-3)

and,

though his source is undoubtedly Frontinus, his verbal accuracy is by no means certain. The phrase with which Frontinus, in the certain fragments of his work (Corpus, 1. 1. 6, lines 13-14), refers to the interdict, de possessione controversia est,

de qua ad interdictum, hoc est iure ordinario, litigatur, hardly supports Schulz, and is almost an echo of Petronius. *5A Flavian date was suggested by G. H. Kraffert, Neue Beitráge (Verden

1888)

8.

THE

SATIRICON

©

.

15

power of a master over his slaves was restricted by a Lex Petronia cited by Modestinus (D 48. 8. 11. 1-2): servo sine iudice ad bestias dato, non solum qui vendidit poena, verum et qui comparavit tenebitur, post legem Petroniam et senatus consulta ad eam legem pertinentia dominis potestas ablata est ad bestias depugnandas suo arbitrio servos tradere: oblato tamen. iudici servo, si iusta sit domini querella, sic poenae

tradetur.

It is quite clear that Glyco acted suo arbitrio;*® had he obtained the condemnation of his steward from a jurisdictional magistrate Echion would have used the technical expression dispensatorem damnandum dandumque ad bestias curavit. Moreover, had the Lex Petronia been in force, no magistrate would have been disposed to condemn the steward and admit that Glyco's was a iusta querella. Indeed, this was just the sort of case for which the law was drafted: a master's punishing his slave for a crime for which the master himself was directly or indirectly responsible. And if a steward had the opportunity delectari dominam, the dominus was, to put it as mildly as possible, negligent. The point is made by Echion himself: quid servus peccavit, qui coactus est facere? a direct echo of the phrase attributed by the elder Seneca‘? to the orator Haterius, impudicitia in ingenuo crimen est, in servo necessita. Even

had been

on the very unlikely hypothesis that the magistrate

‘‘fixed” or was a zelotypus®® and willing to condemn

the

steward, the facts would have necessarily been brought out in court. In this case Glyco, under the Lex Iulia, would have had to proceed against

his wife and divorce her: otherwise he would lay himself open to the savage penalties that the law comminated against complaisant husbands and to the great danger of prosecution by any delator. Echion's

thumb-nail sketch of the unattractive Glyco proves not only that the wife was not punished for her peccadillo, but also that a divorce was the last thing the good-for-nothing Glyco would want. He had obC The text seems sound and uninterpolated, except that the term iudex has been substituted for that of the original jurisdictional magistrate, praetor, or prefect: cf. Index interpolationum 3. 536. *iMarmorale's note on this passage, Cena 64, “la Lex Petronia riconosceva al padrone ad bestias depugnandas suo arbitrio servos suos tradere," is simply not true.

L. Friedlander, Cena Trimalchionis (Leipzig 1906) 265, supposed that Glyco had obtained a judgement fom the urban prefect. I deal with this supposition in the text. “Seneca

Rh.,

Controv.

4,

Praef.

10;

and

cf. Trimalchio's own

remark

(75.

11):

nec turpe est quod dominus iubet. L. Debray, NRHD 43 (1919) 42, n. 6, interprets peccare in the technical sense "to commit a delict.” S"That ze/otypus could also mean “cuckold” would seem to be indicated by its survival in this sense well into the Middle

Ages; cf. J. Gessler, 442:C/ 11 (1942)

85.

16

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

viously married the daughter of Hermogenes, a prominent if not a highly respected citizen, for her money and for her family influence and connexions, and he would lose all by a divorce. Of course the facts were well known——Aoc est se ipsum iraducere—but only through gossip,

and

no delator, without

concrete

evidence, would

dare launch

a prosecution under the Lex Iulia. This was the fundamental weakness of that law as of all statutes rendering adultery a criminal offence: the natural repugnance of husbands to prosecute, and the utter impossibility of compelling them to do so. The wisest man may not avoid getting cuckolded, but only a congenital idiot sticks antlers over his front door. Sensible people behaved like Trimalchio's own máster; a too attractive slave was sent off to some distant country estate.?!

Since Glyco certairly condemned his steward to the amphitheatre suo arbitrio, the only possible conclusion is that the Lex Petronia was not yet in force; and it consequently follows that the Sattricon was written before the passage of the Lex Petronia. Even if Petronius did not place the action of the novel in his own day, this is not the kind of accuracy an ancient author would be inclined to bother about, and, indeed, the whole point of the story would be missed if its readers were used to the conditions created by that statute. Unfortunately the date of the Lex Petronia de servis is uncertain: some civilians date it in A.D.

19,? others

in A.D. 61.5 Ft would

be easy

to say

that, since the Sasiricon cannot be earlier than a.p. 58, the latter are right and Petronius furnishes the proof; but to date the Lex Petronia by the Satiricon and then date the Satiricon by the Lex Petronia is too much like that circular reasoning we have already condemned. We must try to establish the date of the Lex Petronia without reference

to the Sazricon. Four /eges publicae populi since they have occasionally them all, keeping in mind Petronia, of Umbro-Etruscan

Romani are designated as Petroniae and, been confused, it may be well toexamine the following considerations. The gens origin, is not known in Rome till about

5,94t, 69. 3. S Girard, Manuel élémentaire du droit romain® (Paris 1929)

109;

Leonhard- Weiss in

RE 12. 2. 2401. 5A. Bouché-Leclerq,

Manuel des institutions romaines

(Paris

1886) 410:

Rotondi,

Leges publicae populi romani (1912) 468 followed by P. de Francisci, Storia del Diritto Romano (Milan 1938) 2. 1. 434 and H. H. Scullard in Oxford Classical Dictionary 501.

THE

SATIRICON

17

the middle of the second century 5.c.4 and did not become prominent till the Civil Wars.5 On the other hand, legislation by /ex rogata submitted to the comitia fell gradually into disuse during the early Empire and ceased with Nerva, being replaced either by Senatusconsulta or imperial constitutions and rescripts. Moreover, during this period, the right to submit legislation to the comitia was, in practice, limited to the consuls, ordinary or suffect.

1. The Lex Petronia de praefectis municipiorum: known only through epigraphic evidence. It is earlier than a.p. 79 since it is mentioned on an inscription at Pompeii." If it is really referred to in the Fasti Venusini, it would be earlier than 32 n.c. and might in that case be tribunician,55 but the interpretation of the reference in the Fasti is dubious.9 The lex belongs probably to late republican or early imperial times, but its date, and even its purpose, are quite uncertain. It is mentioned here only because it has been confused with the Lex Petronia de servis.® 2. Lex Petronia de adulterii iudicio® mentioned in a rescript of Valerian and Gallienus of 256, C 9. 9. 16. 2:... guia et decreto patrum et lege Petronia ei, qui iure viri delatum adulterium non peregit, numquam postea id crimen deferre permittitur. 'The rescript distinguishes

quite clearly the lex from a decretum patrum, i.e., a Senatusconsultum, that preceded it. Given the subject-matter of the lex there can be little doubt that this Senatusconsultum is the famous SC Turpilianum de abolitionibus

D

48.

16 and

C 9. 45; indeed

the lex is merely

particular application of the general principle. It that both the SC and the lex were proposed by P. Petronius Turpilianus, consul ordinarius in a.p. proposed the Senatusconsultum a few years earlier ἘΠ

a

follows therefore the same person, 61. He probably when praetor.

Münzer in RE 19. 1. 1193: in Wirklichkeit sind Petronier in Rom vor der Mitte

des 2 Fhdts. v. Chr. nicht bekannt, und es sind in der republikanischen Zeit immer nur

wenige und unbedeutende gewesen; and cf. infra 51 and n. 30. The first Petronius to have been politically important would appear to have been the onc proscribed for some unspecified participation in the murder of Caesar; RE 19. 1. 1231 and infra 52. SRotondi, Leges publicae 439. SCTE, 10. 858 = ILS 6359. 58Sq G. Niccolini, Fasti dei Tribuni della Plebe (Milan 1934) 444, followed by T.

R.

S. Broughton,

Magistrates

of the Roman

Republic

2 (New

York

1952)

474.

VC, A. Degrassi, Fasti Consulares (11 13. 1 [Rome 1947]) 1. 256 with bibliography: ef. infra 52, n. 36. 501: is frequently asserted that the L. P. de servís is mentioned in an inscription at Pompeii; Buckland, Law of Slavery 36, n. 7, and G. A. Petropoulos, Historia tou Romaikou

Dikaiou

(Athens

1944) 385, n. 5. The inscription Ο7

n. 57) refers to the L. P. Ze praefectis.

10. 858 (see above,

*'Rotondi, Leges publicae 468.

18

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

3. Lex Iunia Petronia de diberalibus causis 9 Known from D 40. 1. 24. pr. (Hermogenianus, libro primo iuris epitomarum): lege Iunia Petronia,

si dissonantes pares iudicum

existant sententiae, pro libertate

pronuntiari iussum. 'This is an extremely puzzling statute: it obviously

deals with suits de /ibertate before the centumviral court. Its range was later extended by a constitution of Antoninus Pius (Paul, D 42. 1. 38. pr.), probably to the courts of the provincial governors. Its date can hardly be disputed; it was passed in the second half of a.p. 19 by the consul ordinarius M. Iunius Silanus and the consul suffectus P. Petronius P. f. who succeeded the other ordinarius L. Norbanus Balbus. There is no reason whatever to connect this law in any way with the lex Petronia de servis; indeed the two laws deal with entirely different fields of law. The Iunia Petronia belongs to the Law of Civil Procedure,

the

Petronia

de servis

to

the

Law

of Property,

and

no

Roman jurist would confuse the two. To think of a Roman Law of Slavery is entirely modern; for a Roman slavery was merely a special section of the general law of property, or, in certain cases, of persons. The real difficulty is the relation between this law and the Lex Iunia (Norbana) that gave birth to that horrible abortion, Junian Latinity. If the latter was passed at the beginning of a.p. 19—and this is the more widely held opinion—it seems very strange that legislation should have to be introduced only a few months later to deal with a point of procedure that had been overlooked by the drafters of the original statute, especially as there is no doubt whatever that Roman legal draughtsmanship was of a very high order. The Iunia Petronia seems rather to be ad hoc legislation, designed to meet a practical difficulty that had arisen in the courts, i.e., the centumviral court in a particular case tried a short time previously had divided fifty-fifty. The institution of Junian Latinity must have enormously increased both the number and the complexity of the causae liberales, and therefore the Iunia Petronia would logically appear to have been

passed after disputes on status had been before the courts for some time. Since the date of the Iunia Petronia is far more certain than that of the Iunia Norbana, this would seem to be a strong argument in support of those who date Junian Latinity to the earlier part of the reign of Augustus. 8 TI5;d. 464. 93As does Karlowa, Rom. Rechtsgeschichte 1. 620, followed by R. Hanslik in RE 1. 1999 and all those who date the L. P. de servis to a.v. 19. “Cf. H. Last in CAH 10. 888-890.

19,

THE

SATIRICON

19

4. We now come to the Lex Petronia de servis. 5 We have seen that there is absolutely no reason to connect it in any way with the Iunia

Petronia of a.p. 19, and thus the only possibility of dating it is by considering its position in the development of the Roman concept of slavery. In this connexion the revolutionary nature of the Lex Petronia does not seem to have been fully appreciated. From the point of view of Roman Law slaves are merely a particular type of property, and it is a basic principle of law that an owner can do what he pleases

with property to which he has a clear title. That in practice this absolute right was limited—and not only in the case of slaves— by custom, public opinion, self-interest, and other extra-legal but important considerations, does not affect the strictly legal position in the slightest.5 Now the Lex Petronia explicitly prohibits an owner from disposing of certain property suo arbitrio, explicitly recognizes that this right existed, and explicitly abolishes it; potestas adlata est.

So revolutionary an innovation seems to me incredible under the principates of either Augustus or Tiberius, in such matters rather rigidly

conservative,

equally

repulsive

admirers

Roman

of ius, fas,

ideals.

The

mos

Iunia

maiorum,

and

Petronia,

as I have

other

pointed out, merely establishes a presumptio iuris in procedure, but

does not touch in any way the, so to speak, common

law" rights of

ownership. The Lex Petronia would appear to be the lega! expression of that growing feeling of humanity towards slaves that 15 so marked in both Seneca and the Satiricon. This feeling was expressed also in the legislation by Claudius which is the first attempt, and a rather half®Rotondi,

The

Leges publicae 468.

statement of F. Schulz, Classical Roman Law 335, that "classical ownership

did not imply an unlimited right over a thing" is true enough for the classical period,

but the fact that it had to be restricted by law and imperial constitutions proves that it was originally as free as possible. Of course a slave though a "res" was always a "persona"; cf. Buckland, Law of Slavery 3-4. 87N. A. Mashkin, Principat Augusta (Moscow 1949) as reviewed by Ch. Wirszubski FRS 42 (1952) 117, advances the thesis that the whole of the policy of Augustus was dictated by slave owners and directed to increase their power and rights. This is,

of course,

fantastic,

but undoubtedly

the Lex Aelia Sentia and

above

all the SC

Silanianum of a.p. 10 (D 29, 5; C 6. 35; Buckland, Law of Slavery 95-97) aggravated the position of slaves and might be considered reactionary legislation. The Lex

Iunia Petronia may well be an attempt by Tiberius to modify the stringency of his predecessor's statutes, in much the same way as he dealt with the Papia Poppaea: it

would

problem,

be

characteristic

of

Tiberius

to

adopt

so

indirect

an

approach

to

a

20

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

hearted one, to limit the unfettered rights of slave owners. If Suetonius*

is to be trusted, the Claudian law consisted of two parts. The

first

part, the main one, laid down that, if a master exposed a sick slave to avoid the trouble or expense of curing him and the slave recovered, the slave was free and his former master could not claim him. In itself this would hardly be a restriction of property rights, but rather an enactment that, under certain circumstances, if an owner abandoned certain property, he lost his title to it. The real object of the law was to oblige owners to look after sick slaves, but it was obvious to the legal draughtsmen that this object could be easily defeated and the law circumvented by an owner who, finding he could no longer expose his slave and being still unwilling to look after him, simply put him to death. It was therefore further enacted that in such a case— and in such a case alone—the killing of the slave would be held as equivalent to murder. There was left, however, a further loophole. If a slave, sick, old, or unproductive, could not be in practice either exposed or killed, he could still be used to provide entertainment at the games, and the person who gave the munus would probably pay the owner something for him. The Lex Petronia effectively plugged this loophole and, under the influence of the humanitarian ideas of the time, enacted the

first general limitation of the rights of slave owners. The Lex Petronia is therefore later than Claudius. To this conclusion there is one objection that must be examined. Aulus Gellius (5. 14. 27), in telling the famous story of Androcles and the Lion, places the following words in Androcles' mouth: (dominus) me statim rei capitalis damnandum dandumque ad bestias curavit. The phrase expresses in technical legal language the procedure followed

after the Lex Petronia. Since the incident almost certainly took place under Gaius,"? the Lex Petronia would appear to have been in force 85Suet., Claud. 25. 2: cum quidam aegra et adfecta mancipia in insulam Aesculapi taedio medendi exponerent, omnes qui exponerentur liberos esse sanxit, nec redire in dicionem domini, si convaluissent; quod si quis necare quem mallet quam exponere,

caedis 8. 2. actual 59]:

crimine teneri, confirmed by Dio Cassius 60. 29. 7 and Modestinus in D 48. From the phraseology it would appear that Suetonius is copying from the law or from some law book. would be an exception to the general rule that ownership in res mancipi is not

lost by derelictio; cf. Schulz,

Classical Roman

Law 362. If C 7. 6. 1. 3 (Justinian)

is

to be trusted, it would appear that Claudius also determined that slaves who gained their freedom

in this way should have Latin status. On

this legislation of Claudius

see G. May, RHD 15 (1936) 215. The text of Gellius does not preserve the name of the Emperor in whose reign the incident is supposed to have occurred: in 5. 14. 15 some editions print 4 C(aio)

THE

SATIRICON

21

at this time. But we must remember that Gellius is writing in the second half οὗ the second century after Christ, and is, moreover,

translating from the Hellenistic Greek of Apion, a native Egyptian. It is highiy improbable that the latter made use of such technical legal language. Aelian also tells the story (de Nat. An. 7. 48) and,

though he summarizes and turns direct into indirect speech,

he is

probably verbally closer to the original. He says: (ὁ δεσπότης) δὲ ἐφ᾽ οἷς ἠδικήθη εὐθύνει τὸν οἰκέτην, kal

κατεγνώσθη

ἐκεῖνος θηρίοις βορὰ παραδοθῆναι.

This is nothing like as specific a statement as that of Gellius, indeed it is a masterpiece of ambiguity. We can only conclude therefore that Gellius, who, though not a jurist, was familiar with and fond of using legal Latin, finding in Apion a vague expression such as my master held

an inquiry on what I had done wrong, and I was condemned to the beasts,71 translated it by the technical phrase that would be used by his own contemporaries, forgetting, or more probably not knowing,

that the procedure before a magistrate was not yet in force in the time of Apion. Having thus proved, I hope, that the Lex Petronia de servis is a post-Claudian /ex rogata strongly influenced by the general humanitarianism of the time, seen in both Seneca and Petronius, we must

try to establish its precise date. There is no indication that comitial legislation was continued under the Flavians, whose policy indeed was directed at decreasing the authority of the consuls, and the only consul of the gezs Petronia that we know of in this period is M. Petronius Umbrinus, suffect in A.p. 81.7% The revival of comitial legislation

under

Nerva

is itself open

to a good deal of doubt,” and

in any case we know of no Petronius who held a consulship in those years. It therefore follows that the probabilities in favour of a Neronian Cesare, but the praenomen is a conjecture of L. Müller's. Apion, however, taught in Rome under Tiberius and Claudius, and was a member of the Alexandrine embassy to Gaius; cf. FHG 3. 506. "My colleague Mr. R. M. H. Shepherd suggests that Apion probably wrote

something like ὁ δὲ δεσπότης ἐφ᾽ οἷς ἠδικήθη ὑπ᾽ ἐμοῦ εὐθύνει με kal κατεγνώσθην θηρίοις βορὰ παραδοθῆναι. Such an εὐθύνῃ is not a judicial one conducted by a magistrate, but an informal one held before

a conseil de famille such

as described

by Petronius himself (53. 10): iam reus factus dispensator, et iudicium inter cubicularios

actum. We have already pointed out that this whole passage is farcical in the extreme (supra 11, n. 32) and here Petronius is possibly satirizing the trials inter cubiculum principis; but the joke would be pointless if such informal trials had not been a common practice. Cf. infra 53 my reconstruction of the stemma of the Petronii, and RE 19. 1. 1230, n. 80. BCS. V, Arangio-Ruiz, Storia del Diritto Romano? (Napoli 1942) 231.

22

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

date are overwhelming. Since the lex must have been sponsored by a consul, ordinary or suffect, we have four possibilities during this period:^* A. Petronius Lurco, suffect during the latter part of 4.p. 58; P. Petronius Turpilianus,

ordinary

consul in 61; T. Petronius

Niger,

suffect in some year between 63 and 70; and the Arbiter himself, suffect in some year of Nero’s reign before a.p. 66. Unfortunately our only complete lists of consuls for the reign are those for the years

56-59 and 62. Until we can complete these consular lists it ts impossible to choose between the various possibilities with any degree of confidence; in the present state of our knowledge the most we can do is to examine and weigh certain probabilities. That the author of this legislation was A. Petronius Lurco seems to me improbable in the extreme. This conjecture would oblige us to assign the Satirtcon to the first part of A.D. 58, a date which, though not actually impossible, is highly unlikely, given the relationship not only with Lucan's poem but also with Nero’s own Troiae Halosis. Most writers on the subject of the Lex Petronia have attributed it to Petronius Turpilianus during his consulship in the first part of A.D. 61, and on the whole, in the present state of our knowledge, this is perhaps the most probable hypothesis, for he was the author of the SC Turpilianum and of another Zex rogata, the Lex Petronia Ze adulterii iudicio. The comitia must have met only rarely in this period, and presumably as much legislation as possible would have been presented to them. On the other hand we do not know whether Petronius Turpilianus was influenced by the humanitarian movement of the time—we know of him only as a reliable man in an emergency and a good administrator of unquestioned loyalty—and the two leges Petroniae have nothing in common except their name. There is, moreover, a general consideration which, while not being

real evidence and still less proof, deserves to be kept in mind. Legislation so revolutionary as our Lex Petronia is usually passed after some

particular case has drawn the attention of both lawyers and public to the unsatisfactory state of the law. Such an event occurred in a.p. 61 when the city prefect, Pedianus Secundus, was murdered by one of his slaves. From the account of Tacitus? it would appear that the crime took place in the second half of the year, after Turpilianus had left for Britain. In such cases the law prescribed that the whole familia —in this case over four hundred people—should be executed,

and

the

Senate

refused

to

modify

the

law,

notwithstanding

“Vide infra the stemma of the Petronii on p. 53 and notes. 1 Ann,

14. 42-45.

the

THE

entreaties

of

the

populace,

SATIRICON

covertly

supported

23

by

the

Emperor

himself. Any humanitarian proposal would be popular in such circumstances, and, given Senate, it would be lex rogata, rather constitution. If this

the temper of the people and the attitude of the more likely to be submitted to the comitia as a than enacted by Senatusconsultum or imperial reasoning is correct, the author of our legislation

was either the Arbiter or T. Petronius Niger. The possibility that Petronius "Arbiter" may have been the author of this legislation cannot be excluded. Tacitus states that, as consul, he was surprisingly and unexpectedly active, and it is not easy to see what activity, except legislative, was possible for a suffect consul under the later Julio-Claudians. The Lex Petronia is also the kind of legislation we might expect both from the person described by

Tacitus and from the author of the Satiricon. Since he was a favourite of Nero's, we can reasonably conjecture that the Arbiter reached the consulship when he was at the height of his influence, that is to say after Seneca's had begun to decline and before Tigellinus' had become overwhelming. We should therefore expect his consulship to fall in one of the two years A.D. 60 and 61.7 In favour of the year 60 is the

consideration that Nero might want a close personal friend, his own arbiter elegantiarum, to be consul for the celebration of the Neroneia; and this, of course, might be the chief activity to which Tacitus referred. On the other hand, it is quite possible that two members of the same gens, close relations and favourites of the Emperor, might hold the consulship in the same year as a particular mark of imperial favour." Finally, the candidature of our only recently resurrected T. Petronius

Niger cannot be absolutely dismissed. In its favour is the confusion made by Pliny and Plutarch about the praemomen of the Arbiter, which they both give as T(itus).78 It is not outside the range of

possibility that they confused the author of a well-known lex with the "Some as yet unpublished tablets from Herculaneum have completed the consular lists for A.D. 62 (see the Aggiunte in Degrassi's Fasti Consolari). Of course Petronius might have been consul in 63, 64, or 65, but his influence during these years would have been on the wane. Moreover, had he been consul at the time of the great fire or

the year before his death, we should expect Tacitus to have made some reference to the fact. The way the historian speaks of his consulship would indicate that it had taken place some time before his death. "7For example, the case of the two Vitellii quoted infra 47, n. 4. "5E ide infra 50 and note 21: it is quite impossible to identify this Petronius with the Arbiter, even admitting that the latter's praenomen was Titus. In the name of the former, Niger is no nickname but the official cognomen since it appears in an official act. He therefore had the fria nomina. The "Arbiter," like the prefect of Egypt and the consul of a.p. 19, had only praenomen and nomen. Had he had a cognomen Tacitus would certainly have given it.

24

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

author of a notorious novel. In this case the Lex Petronia might be of any date between 61 and 70. To resume: I hope I have proved, that the Lex Petronia de servis was Petronius Turpilianus in A.p. 61, by T. Petronius Niger between A.p.

without reference to the Satiricon, enacted under Nero, probably by possibly by Petronius Arbiter or 60 and the end of the reign.

*

I have already said that the question of the authorship depends on that of the date. If the Satiricon is of the time of Nero it follows inevitably that it was written by the Petronius of Tacitus. Having proved that the Satiricon was written between Α.Ὁ. 58 and 65 I

submit that it was written by Petronius "Arbiter." That an anonymous work

written

at this time should

have

been

fathered

on

him

is so

intrinsically improbable and so devoid of any semblance of proof as to require no contradiction. The main arguments of those who consider the "Petronian" authorship of the Sasiricon a question be answered are best put by Émile Thomas:

that cannot

Pour la question de l'identité de personne entre le Pétrone de Tacite et l'auteur du

roman, l'obstacle principal est toujours celui-ci

. . . Dans le portrait si vivant que

Tacite a tracé du consulaire et de sa fin, il n'est pas question de son talent d'écrivain; en fait d'ouvrage de Pétrone, Tacite ne cite que le pamphlet envoyé à Néron: com-

ment expliquer ce silence, si ce méme répandu et qui lui du Satiricon: mais pas un mot qui se mélé de si prés à

consulaire

avait écrit un roman trés lu, trés

a survécu? D'autre part, nous ne connaissons pas la vie de nous constatons que, dans tant de pages, il n'y a pas une rapporte à la vie publique: comment comprendre qu'un la politique de son temps, ait pu écrire un long ouvrage

ne rappelle ce qu'il a fait, ce qu'il a vu, ni méme, précision l'histoire de son temps???

l'auteur allusion, homme, oà rien

avec pleine clarté et en toute

M. Thomas’ book is as full of good things as a plum pudding, but in this particular case his observations are not arguments, they are

impertinences.

M.

Thomas

who,

like nearly all Frenchmen,

is an

admirable writer, is here quite calmly telling two of the very greatest artists in prose, Tacitus and Petronius, how to write history, and how to write novels. He joins those critics, ancient and modern, who blame Jane Austen for not depicting English sentiment during the

Napoleonic Wars, Charles Dickens for dealing with "low" life, and Rudyard

Kipling

for ignoring

the struggles

of Indian

nationalism.

Any great artist has the right to make his own rules of relevance. It is obvious

that all ancient historians, Polybius not excluded,

very different ideas from modern No

doubt

a modern

mE, Thomas,

historian,

historians on what

with

his

academic

Pérone—lenvers de la société romaine! (Paris

was relevant.

career 1912)

had

in

50, n. 1.

mind,

THE

SATIRICON

25

would, in the text and in the footnotes, have given us a complete biography of Petronius, the exact date of his birth, his full cursus honorum and list of works, with dates, places of publication, and variant editions. It would all be extremely useful and valuable; but how dull! The space that Tacitus devotes to Petronius is actually a confirmation of the importance of Petronius as an author. Tacitus gives him two full chapters, twice as much as he gives Lucan, whose epic poem also is not referred to. Petronius was not one of the more important political figures of the time; the interest that Tacitus so clearly shows

must be due to some other reason, and that reason can only be literary. The

author of the Dialogus de oratoribus

had read and

studied

the

Satiricon; and a master of prose, such as Tacitus, could hardly fail to

admire another great artist, however different. To a specialist in antithesis, the contrast between the //áneur, the dandy, the writer of salacious novels, and the capable administrator, the acute critic, the artist in living and writing, must have been fascinating. It is the same contrast, the same antithesis that we ourselves find so fascinating in Pepys, the hedonist, and Pepys, the saviour of the Navy; in Boswell, the friend of Johnson, and in Boswell, the friend of Wilkes. Of course we can hardly expect that Tacitus, that high-minded and serious Stoic, that Olympian dispenser of eternal praise or infamy, and, not to put too fine a point on it, that ‘superlative prig, should openly avow his fascination and admiration. But he devotes to Petronius an amount of space which, given the general economy of the Annals, is not otherwise explicable. And I cannot help feeling that, in his

description of the death of Petronius, the Stoic Tacitus was uncomfortably aware that the way this dandy met his death was far more dignified than the Stoic posturings of Seneca or Thrasea. The authorship and, within very narrow limits, the date of composi-

tion

being

thus

established,

the purpose

and

the occasion

of the

publication follow with a high degree of probability. The Satiricon was written for the amusement of Nero and his pauci familiares on the

occasion of the Neroneia of a.p. 60. The general assumption in the Satiricon that the simplest way of getting a fortune is to find hidden treasure would seem to refer to the early Neronian legislation on treasure-trove and echo the passage of Calpurnius (Ec/. 4. 117 ff.).*?

By this time the influence of Seneca was declining and the sly digs at philosophers in general and Seneca in particular would be appreciated. The

Troizse Halosis and the de Bello Civili, in this case, are neither

parodies

nor criticisms, but merely

exercises on themes

800n the legislation concerning treasure-trove cf. Momigliano, 98.

that were

26

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

popular in the small coterie for which Petronius was writing. Momigliano's remark: ‘‘he described the big themes of the literary life of

his days (the Imperial poetry on Troy included) as subjects not for emperors and lofty people but for dubious, amusing, and vulgar members of a low society"? is true and penetrating. A highly sophisticated society would enjoy the joke: that the joke was also a very subtle indictment of that society itself would scarcely be apparent, and may

not have been deliberately intended by the author. It would therefore appear more probable that Lucan, in revising his poem for publication, took some hints from Petronius, than that Petronius was attacking Lucan's poem. The subsequent consulship of Petronius proves that Nero appreciated the work. But, as an author, Petronius had overreached himself. In writing a highly topical skit for the amusement of a very restricted group he forfeited his popularity with a wider public and with the professional critics and literary historians. The Satiricon is, and must always have been, a most disconcerting work. Like Peacock's novels, which in certain ways it rather resembles, it obstinately refuses to be fitted into any literary genre. After the passing of the society for which he wrote, and the growing emphasis in the following generations on “high seriousness" and formal education, Petronius

was naturally neglected. No one could really expect Quintilian, or any "educationist"

ancient or modern,

to recommend

the Satiricon

as a model to his pupils. Tacitus had read him and reluctantly admired him, but we can hardly blame him for not publicly declaring his admiration. The best thing schoolmasters, rhetoricians, and literary historians can do is to ignore so original an author. The Sasiricon is relegated to the category "curious" and to grammarians on the look-out for strange expressions and usages. It is not surprising that

so much of Petronius has been lost: what is really surprising is that so much has been preserved. The Satiricon wil continue to remain a puzzling and fascinating work. It is true enough that Petronius! avowed purpose was to amuse Nero's court and that he apparently succeeded in accomplishing this ‘purpose, but is this all? Can anyone be as completely detached as Petronius seems to be? What does he really think of the society he is describing or the society for which he is writing? Is he really a satirist?

a moralist? The Sphinx smiles and remains inscrutable. *"/Momigliano, 100. Petronius would have heartily subscribed to Chesterfield's dictum (of 10 May O.S. 1748; Letters ed. Dobrée 3. 1146): "Whatever poets may

write, or fools believe, of rural innocence and truth, and of the perfidy of Courts, this

is most

undoubtedly

true—that

shepherds

and ministers

are both men;

nature and passions the same, the modes of them only different."

their

THE OF

DATE, THE

PURPOSE, LUDUS

DE

AND

AUTHORSHIP

MORTE

CLAUDII

.. Aire their Party-Pamphleteers To set Elysium &y the Ears. Swirr!

O follow up a study of the Satiricon with one of the Ludus de morie Claudii requires no apology. Most of the standard scholarly and scholastic editions of the Satiricon include the

Ludus. In both cases the date and authorship have been matters of dispute, and the interpretation of both works depends to a very great degree on the view taken of their authorship and purpose. In the Satiricon, however, the difficulties derive largely from its originality: we have nothing remotely like it, nor does it appear probable that, had more ancient novels or romances been preserved, we should find any but formal resemblances.

The Ludus is also unique, but this singularity is due to mere chance; actually, it belongs to a genre that must have been nauseatingly common. Ány student of the period that stretches from the age of the Gracchi to the accession of Trajan must inevitably come to the conclusion that at no other time in the history of the world can there have been so great and incessant a flow of political tracts, pamphlets, satires, pasquinades, lampoons, and epigrams, except possibly in England during the comparable period from the Reformation to the

repeal of the Corn Laws. Caesar himself gives the impression that at times he considered the pen mightier than the sword? This war 1As far as I know no one has pointed out that the whole passage of Swift's On Poetry: a Rapsody (ll. 190-222) that begins "A Prince the Moment he is crown'd, Inherits ev'ry Virtue round," and ends with the couplet quoted above, is directly inspired by the Ludus. The influence of the Ludus on the "Party-Pamphleteers" of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries deserves to be investigated. Swift read Petronius in 1697/8 (Tale of a Tub, ed. Guthkelch and Nichol Smith, liv), but we do not know when he read the Ludus or, indeed, the works of Seneca.

2The Commentaries may be considered an apologia rather than polemical pro. paganda, but at a particularly critical moment he personally answered Cicero's eulogy of Cato; cf. Excursus II. 27

28

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

of pamphlets which was natural under the Republic and in the earlier years of Augustus, when the influence of educated and upperclass opinion was by no means negligible, continued and increased

even when the Government could ignore public opinion, provided it kept the loyalty of the troops. This is natural; in most totalitarian régimes, as was proved in both Italy and Germany, sniping at the Government

from cafés and Bierhallen becomes

a universally popular

sport, harmless, within certain limits, alike to the sniper and to the sniped. With the exception of our Ludus and of the Appendix Sallustiana—if

genuine—,

practically

all this

literature?

has

disappeared,

perhaps, on the whole, fortunately; but it is evident that much, if not most, of it was still extant in the time of Tacitus and Suetonius. In any discussion of the Ludus we must always clearly bear in mind that only for us is it unique; that the death of Claudius probably inspired half the literate population of Rome to write lampoons and pasquinades. It is enough to consult the editors of Defoe and Swift to realize the immense difficulties of attribution and interpretation presented by a vast mass of anonymous, semi-anonymous, or pseudonymous pamphlets. Fortunately, however, the manuscript tradition of the Zudus is infinitely better than that of the Satiricon. G. F. Russo has collated thirty codices for his recent excellent edition, and has discussed them in detail* I shall merely follow his conclusions. Of these thirty, twenty-seven deteriores derive from three which alone are of real importance. These are S—Sangallensis 569 of the IX-X century. V—Valentinianensis 411, A.p. 880-930. L—Londinensis B.M. suppl. MSS 11983, XI-XII

century.

These three codices derive from the same archetype A, which lacked at least one page (the lacuna between chapters 7 and 8): according to Russo, S was copied directly from A, while V and L were independently copied from a hyparchetype T'; so far Russo. Since V is of the end of the ninth century and was younger than T, and since À was already lacking a page when I was written, it would seem to follow that A was of very considerable antiquity, possibly οἵ the fourth or fifth

century. Ἵπ Greek we can consider the so-called Pagan Acts of the Martyrs as an example of the genre, as also Philo's in Flaccum; the philosophical and religious polemics do not concern us in this context. *Russo, 19-33.

THE

LUDUS

29

In S the inscriptio reads DIUI CLAUDII INCIPIT AIIOOHOCIC ANNEI SENECE p SATIRA and the suéscriptio DIUI CLAUDII

EXPLICIT

APOTHEOSIS

ANNEI

SENECAE

PERSATURAM.

V lacks a suóscriptio; the inscriptio reads SENECAELUDUS

MORTE

DE

CLAUDI.

In L the txscriptio reads

MORTE CLAUDII LUDUS SENECAE

INCIP

CAESARIS, DE MORTE

EIDEM

SENECAE

LUD

DE

and the suéscriptio EXPLICIT CLAUDII CAESARIS.

Since the scribes who wrote SVL, and therefore, a fortiori, the scribes of the hyparchetype and of the archetype, were sufficiently familiar with Greek to be able to copy it with fair accuracy, there would have been no reason for them to have altered an inscriptio or subscriptio in Greek or containing Greek words. The agreement of V and L would indicate that the title in the hyparchetype T' was Ludus de morte Claudii. And since S and Τ' are both copied directly from the archetype and give entirely different titles to the work, we should

conclude

that the archetype

did not give the pamphlet

any title.

In any case it certainly did not call it 4pokolokyntosis; if there was a title at allit was either Ludus or Apotheosis per saturam. An examination

of the manuscript

tradition

would

therefore lead to the following

conclusions: (1) that the archetype, an excellent and early codex, either implicitly—by including it with other works of Seneca—or explicitly attributed it to Seneca; (2) neither the scribe of the archetype nor the scribe of the hyparchetype identified the pamphlet with the /Zpokolokyntosis, and all titles, Ludus, Apotheosis per saturam, and zfpokolokyntosis, are probably conjectures of scribes or scholars.

Of course,

manuscript

tradition

is by

no means

infallible.

The

attribution of an anonymous pamphlet to Seneca may have been made in error, or the scribe of the archetype may have omitted the

title either by chance or by ignorance, but this manuscript tradition, for what it is worth, would seem to cast the burden of proof both on those who deny the Senecan authorship and on those who assert its identity with the /£pokolokyntosis. As far as the MSS

are concerned

the pamphlet is Seneca's and is not the Apokolokyntosis. ’The popularity of Seneca in the Middle Ages caused many works to be falsely attributed to him, including the Octavia and the Sententiae of Publilius. On the other hand H. St. Sedlmayer in #’S 23 (1901) 181-182, conjectured that Apotheosis per saturam was a gloss that ousted the original title; cf. also O. Weinreich, Senecas Apocolocyntosis (Berlin 1923) 2, n. 1. This is perfectly possible, but is an explanation, not a proof. E. E. Sikes, CAH 10. 727, points out how easily an anonymous pamphlet could be attributed to Seneca.

ARBITER

30

OF

ELEGANCE

Let us now turn to the work itself, and study it with no preconceptions as to its authorship or title. Two questions must be answered from internal evidence alone: what is the date of the pamphlet and what is its purpose? Only when these two questions have been answered satisfactorily can we ask ourselves the third: is it the dpokolokyntosis of Seneca? Should the answer to this third question be in the negative, we must then proceed to the fourth: who wrote it? As to the date: the first and obvious impression that the pamphlet was written immediately after the decree of Apotheosis of Claudius, shortly after his death

on October

13, a.p.

54, is only

strengthened

and confirmed by further study, and the suggestion that it was published at the Saturnalia of that year? is intrinsically probable. It would appear to have been written after the death of Narcissus, before "everyone had agreed'" that the death of Claudius had been due to poison, and presumably before the death of Silanus? was known in Rome. What those scholars who date the work to a.p. 60? or to some time between A.D. 59 and 62" forget 1s that nothing 1s more ephemeral or more transitory than the topical political pasquinade, that nothing is staler than yesterday's news, and that no history is less memorable than contemporary history. The historian from his vantage point sees an historical period displayed before him; to him all years are equally memorable, and when dealing with the events of A.p. 60 those of A.D. 54 are immediately present to his mind. In ordinary life most people have the greatest difficulty in recollecting with precision what may have happened five years ago. The historian who easily remembers the day, month, and year of the accession of Tiberius will probably have

considerable

difficulty

in

accurately

dating

the

accession

of

King Edward VIII. Modern scholars can exercise their acumen or ingenuity in unravelling the allusions in the Ludus, but I doubt whether any of these would have been intelligible or interesting to contemporaries after twelve months of the new reign. In a.p. 60 few would remember even quid actum sit "in terra" ante diem III Idus *B. W.

Henderson,

The

Life and Principate of the Emperor Nero

(London

1903)

51, 54, 458. TSuet., Claud. 46. 2: veneno quidem occisum convenit; there is no evidence whatsoever that rumours of foul play were current immediately after the death, indeed the contrary would seem to be implied by Suetonius. ’Proconsul of Asia, put to death ignaro Nerone per dolum Agrippinae; Tacitus, Ann, 13. 1. Cf. D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asta Minor (Princeton 1950) 563 and 1419, nn. 66, 67. The news of his death could hardly have reached Rome before the end of December. *Toynbee, 91. ?A. Ronconi, Senecae Apokolokyntosis (Milan 1947) iii.

THE

LUDUS

31

Octobris and all would be entirely indifferent as to what might have happened in caelo. The whole point of a political squib is that it be immediately topical. That our pamphlet was written and published in November or December a.p. 54 seems as certain as anything of this kind can be. It is very much more difficult to assess the author's purpose. The first impression is, of course, that the work is a ferocious lampoon on the deceased Emperor. It is undoubtedly that, but it is also very much more than that. The real attack is not on Claudius but on his Apotheosis, that is to say on the persons who advocated the Apotheosis and the complaisant Senate that decreed it. In the writer's hardly concealed opinion the proper decree would have been one of damnatio memoriae, which is practically the decree passed by the Senate of the Gods. Since the Apotheosis was the first official act of the new Government, the Ludus would appear to be an attack on the Government that had forced the Apotheosis on the Senate. That Government consisted at the moment

of four persons, Agrippina, Pallas, Burrus,

and Seneca. All four had constituted the Cabinet of Claudius which thus

remained

unchanged,

except

for the elimination

of Narcissus,

disapproved of by Seneca and Burrus, but greeted with enthusiasm by the writer.? Though it was from the very beginning clear that this Government was far from united and that a struggle was impending between Agrippina and Pallas on the one side and Burrus and Seneca on the other, there is no evidence whatsoever that the new

Government—and the great majority of the Senate as well—was not absolutely unanimous on the subject of the Apotheosis.5 That the chief mover was Agrippina is possible, but she was aided and abetted by Seneca, who composed Nero's speech to the Senate, and this UToynbee, 91, suggests that if the Neroneia began would "give new point to the opening of the piece." intrinsically probable, but in a.p. 60 the memorable the accession of Nero, not the death of Claudius. tali pamphlets o si scrivono subito sotto l'impressione

on the dies imperii of Nero it Her dating of the Neroneia is event of October 13, 54, was Russo, 11, puts it admirably: degli avoenimenti ... o non si

sertoono.

"Tacitus, dan. 13. 1-2. B7 ud, 13. 2, 3, 4. “Tacitus, Ann. 13. 2. UToynbee, 85; though, as we shall see (/n/ra 40), Burrus and Seneca were much more directly concerned in having the Senate ratify the acta of Claudius than were Agrippina and Nero. 1C,

Marchesi,

Seneca

(Messina

1920)

44, doubts

the Senecan

authorship

of the

speech, but the statement of Tacitus, 4nm. 13. 3, is far too clear and explicit for any doubts to be possible. Marchesi's comment that the speech was "certamente privo di importanza politica" is entirely gratuitous: on such an occasion no speech is ever devoid of political importance. !

ARBITER

32

OF

ELEGANCE

speech, given the circumstances, must have outlined a programme and must have been a kind of Speech from the Throne. And an attack on the Speech from the Throne is an attack on the servants of the Throne. For this purpose the writer adopts the obvious method, which has been followed ever since, notably by Wilkes in "No. 45": protestations of loyalty to the person of the Sovereign, but a vigorous attack on the measures that his servants advocate. Nero, of course, is not to blame for what he has been made to say in the Senate; the blame rests on his advisers, who are those of the previous reign. If only he would rule himself, then, indeed, a Golden Age would be at hand, then felicia lassis saecula praestabit legumque silentia rumpet... talis Caesar adest, talem iam Roma

Neronem

aspiciel.... The words stir an echo....

See private Life by wisest arts reclaim’d! See ardent youth to noblest manners fram'd! See us acquire whate’er was sought by you, If Curio, only Curio, will be true! That Pulteney was even less likely than Nero to inaugurate a Golden Age—after all, no one knew what Nero was really like, but Akenside should have known the very definite limits of Pulteney's "Patriotism" — merely proves that political pamphleteers forget nothing and learn nothing. If we were dealing with the eighteenth century, we should confidently affirm that the author of the Ludus was a minor politician in opposition who, on the demise of the Crown, expected to get a place, was bitterly disappointed when the new Sovereign did not at once dismiss

his

father's

servants,

and

wrote

a violent

attack

on

those

servants and on the whole of the previous reign to remind the new ruler, whom he adroitly flatters, of the writer's existence and the consequent possibility of a new administration. We now turn to the question whether the Ludus is to be identified with the 4pokolokyntosis by Seneca mentioned by Dio Cassius, and by Dio Cassius alone." All the external evidence would seem to be

against such

an identification. We

have seen

that the manuscript

tradition, for what it is worth, is against it. Why the work we possess should ever have been called 4pokolokyntosis is, to put it as mildly "Dio,

60. 35

(epitome

Josserand in RBPA

Xiphilini).

It is not "le plus

ancien

12 ([1933] 616): it is "le seul témoignage."

témoignage"

(so Ch.

THE

LUDUS

33

as possible, by no means clear. This difficulty has always been felt, and a very large number of ingenious explanations have been and continue to be proposed.!? I shall not examine them in detail: their number, their ingenuity, and their mutual inconsistency are clearest

proofs In

any

of the prima facie objection case

they

are at the

best

to the

current

explanations;

they

identification. are

not

and

cannot ever be proofs. There is no escaping the fact that the obvious interpretation of "Apokolokyntosis" is “Pumpkinification,” that there is no trace of any such “Pumpkinification” in the Ludus, and that

all attempts to explain this discrepancy are far-fetched in the extreme.!? If the Ludus can be proved by internal or external evidence to be identical with the /pokolokyntosis mentioned by Dio, then, and only then, would it be necessary to explain the choice of such a title, even as one has to explain why Stendhal chose to give his novel the strange

title Le Rouge et le Noir. Until such proof be forthcoming, both the manuscript tradition and the title are clearly against the identity of the two works, and the burden of proof still lies on those who assert, not on those who deny, this identity.

The

principles

to be followed in any discussion of the meaning

of the title ““Apokolokyntosis” have been admirably defined by Professor F. A. Todd.?? “The quest of the true explanation must proceed from the assumptions (1) that the work is complete; (2) that the title has some propriety; (3) that, as a corollary of (2), the justification of the title exists in the work itself." To these three principles we would add a fourth: we are not justified in tampering with the text of Dio or with the Greek language to fit a hypothetical explanation of the title.?t Now I submit that, since no justification of the title has been found 13See the various hypotheses in A. P. Ball, The Satire of Seneca (New York 1912) 52 ff.; F. A. Todd, CQ 37 (1943) 103-107; most recently and fully, Louis Deroy, Latomus 10 (1951) 311-318. Also R. B. Onians, The Origins of European Thought

(Cambridge 1954) 507. WIf Apokolokyntosis is formed on the analogy of Apotheosis (turning a man into a God)—and we have no reason to doubt this analogy —Russo's interpretation, 17, *deificazione di una zucca, di uno zuccone,” i.e. ''Apotheosis of a pumpkin-head," is untenable.

Moreover

F. A.

Todd,

C9

37

(1943)

104,

has shown

that the gourd

“is not, in Latin, a symbol of stupidity" and that in the whole satire "no emphasis is laid on the stupidity of Claudius.” On the other hand, I do not think "'far-fetched"' an unfair description of his own explanation, that gourd = fritil/us = dice-box, and

that Claudius is in Hades transformed into such an article. 2009 37 (1943) 104. "E, Mueller-Graupa in Pahslologus 85 (1930) 319 reads ἀποκολοκύντησις and explains Ende der Narrheit; H. Wagenvoort in Mnemosyne 1 (1934) 7 ff. explains it

on the lines of ἀποραφανίδωσις;

of ἀποφάκωσις.

Ronconi, Senecae

Apokolokyntosis viii-x, on those

34

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

that commands general acceptance, notwithstanding four centuries of study, and since the identification of our existing pamphlet with the one of which Dio gives the title is itself a conjecture of Renascence? and modern scholars, unsupported by any direct ancient evidence whatsoever, the only sensible conclusion is that the conjecture is wrong and that our pamphlet and the Zpoko/okyntosis are two different works. Some light on the nature of Seneca's ‘pokolokyntosis may be obtained by a careful consideration of the whole context of Dio.?* He mentions it together with L. Junius Gallio's remark that Claudius had been raised to heaven with a hook, and with Nero's own epigram on mushrooms being the food of the Gods.^ The passage follows immedlately after the mention of the Apotheosis, but the point that Dio seems to be stressing is the hypocrisy of Agrippina and Nero who deified the very person they had murdered. It would therefore seem that the Apokolokyntosis, like the epigrams of Gallio and Nero, contained at least some reference to the poisoning of Claudius; that it did not merely ridicule the Apotheosis itself, but also explained or described Aow Claudius had got himself “pumpkinified.” Dio, in his account of the poisoning of Claudius, has used the same

source or sources as Suetonius in his second account of the poisoning; indeed, the story given by Dio is merely the expansion of the one in Suetonius, very different from the detailed account given by Tacitus.? Nothing can be deduced from omissions, for these may be due to Dio's epitomators, but there are notable differences of fact. According to Tacitus, the actual minister of the poisoned mushrooms was the "The identity of the Ludus and the Apokolokyntosis was first suggested rianus Iunius (Adrien de Jonghe), Animadversaria 1. 17, in J. Gruterus, sive fax artium

liberalium

(Frankfurt

1604)

by HadLampas,

4.

9 Αγριππῖνα δὲ kai ὁ Νέρων πενθεῖν προσεποιοῦντο ὃν ἀπεκτόνεσαν, és re τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀνήγαγον ὃν ἐκ τοῦ συμποσίου φοράδην ἐζενηνόχεσαν. ὅθενπερ Λούκιος Ἰούνιος Γαλλίων ὁ τοῦ Σενέκα ἀδελφὸς ἀστειότατόν τι ἀπεφθέγξατο. συνέθηκε

μὲν γὰρ καὶ ὁ Σενέκας σύγγραμμα ἀποκολοκύντωσιν αὐτὸ ὥσπερ τινὰ ἀπαθαγνάτισιν ὀνομάσας" ἐκεῖνος δὲ ἐν βραχυτάτῳ πολλὰ εἰπὼν ἀπομνημονεύεται. ἐπειδὴ γὰρ τοὺς ἐν τῷ δεσμωτηρίῳ θανατουμένους ἀγκίστροις τισὶ μεγάλοις οἱ δήμιοι ἔς τε τὴν ἀγορὰν ἀνεῖλκον καὶ ἐντεῦθεν ἐς ποταμὸν ἔσυρον, ἔφη τὸν Κλαύδιον ἀγκίστρῳ ἐς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀνενεχθῆναι. καὶ ὁ Νέρων δὲ οὐκ ἀπάξιον μνήμης ἔπος κατέλιπε. τοὺς γὰρ μύκητας θεῶν βρῶμα ἔλεγεν εἶναι, ὅτι καὶ ἐκεῖνος διὰ τοῦ μύκητος θεὸς ἐγεγόνει. On

this text see Ch. Josserand in RBPA4

“Toynbee,

12 (1933) 615-619.

91, rightly points out that there is no evidence

that these epigrams

followed immediately after the consecration. 284, Momigliano has brilliantly analysed the sources in RendLine

(1932)

308 ff.

THE

LUDUS

35

taster Halotus; according to Dio, Agrippina, having received the poison from Locusta, prepared a dish of mushrooms, inserted the poison in the finest and largest one, which she then passed to Claudius, and partook of the other harmless ones herself. In this version of the story—which is so improbable as to require no refutation—Agrippina appears in a far more sinister light than in the other; she is not merely the instigator of the crime and an accessory before the fact, she is the actual murderess. These details, which belong more to a novelette than to history, cannot have been invented by Dio; he must have read them somewhere. Among Dio's sources are undoubtedly the works of Seneca, and it would therefore appear probable that

he drew this account of the death of Claudius from the pamphlet by Seneca which he quotes immediately after his description of the poisoning. It is easy to see when Seneca would write a pamphlet ridiculing the Apotheosis and giving a highly sensational account of the poisoning of Claudius, and what his purpose was in writing it. It would form part of the violent propaganda campaign against Agrippina; and Seneca will have written it, as the official apologist of the Government, either immediately before, or, far more probably, immediately after her murder. Nero was always abnormally sensitive to public opinion, which was naturally horrified at matricide." The object of the Government propaganda was to efface this horror by blackening the character of Agrippina and at the same time support the official charge that she had been plotting Nero's death. If Agrippina, that monster of duplicity, had feloniously, wilfully, and of malice afore-

thought poisoned a stupid, debauched, and unattractive, but at the same time subservient and uxorious husband, was it not probable that she would be both able and willing to eliminate a son, who, by his independence and strength of character, was no longer satisfied to be entirely dominated by her? This accusation was advanced, as an English lawyer would put it, in order "to show system," and to strengthen as far as possible the official charge that Agrippina was "H.

R. W. Smith, Problems Historical and Numismatic in the Reign of Augustus,

University of California Publications in Classical Archaeology 2 (1951) 188, 208. It is immaterial for our purpose to discuss whether Dio was directly acquainted with the Senecan Corpus, or whether he quoted the 4pokolokyntosis at second hand.

The suggestion that this was the source of the account of the poisoning had been made by A. Stahr, Zgrippina, die Mutter Neros? (Berlin 1880) 403-404. Henderson, Nero 123; Momigliano, C4H 10. 716-717. Nero's preoccupation with public opinion was illustrated by R. S. Rogers in an as yet unpublished address

to the American Philological Association in 1952.

36

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

planning Nero's death, which, on the face of it, would have appeared improbable in the extreme. Of the two contradictory accounts of Claudius's death; the Locusta-mushroom story, as opposed to the Halotus-Salii, was certainly official, for it was the one Nero himself believed, and must therefore have been circulated by the official propaganda bureau, of which Seneca was undoubtedly the head. In these circumstances the Apotheosis would also be attacked—the public by now would have forgotten that Seneca had composed the speech—for it could be represented, as Dio represents it, as the crowning act of duplicity on Agrippina's part. It is after the murder of Agrippina that the cult of Claudius is neglected and his reign is regarded as that of a weak, foolish, and ridiculous old man, entirely under the domination of his wives and freedmen, to whom, rather than to Claudius himself, the misdeeds of the time should be attributed.?? Whether this Zpokolokyntosis was published anonymously or not is a matter of little importance; its authorship would be known and there would be no good reason to deny it. If such was Seneca's Apokolokyntosis, if it was the source of Dio's account of the murder of Claudius, it is clear that it cannot be identical

with our Ludus. We therefore come now to our last question: who is the author of the Ludus? According to the manuscript tradition the author is Seneca, and, prima facie, there can be no particular objection to such an attribution. We know that Seneca wrote one political pamphlet, the ;fpokolokyntosis, and it is therefore highly probable that he wrote others. The Conduct of the Allies is not Swift's only pamphlet, "No. 45" Wilkes's, nor Taxation no Tyranny Johnson's: political pamphleteering is a chronic and apparently incurable disease. Seneca, as the official apologist of the Government and of his party in the Government, like all other political pamphleteers will have published some tracts under his own name, others anonymously, and others, that he did not write, will have been attributed to him by the public.*? Suet.

Claud.

44. 2. Since

Agrippina-mushroom

he mentions

the

Halotus-Salii

version

before

the

one, we might infer that the former was in circulation before

the latter, which was undoubtedly the official version. Toynbee, 91-2. After A.D. 56 Divif. is omitted from the Roman coinage though it is continued in the provincial issues; the omission is probably due to the decline of Agrippina’s influence. Cf. M. P. Charlesworth, RS 27 (1937) 57 and A. M.

Colini, Storia e Topografia del Celio nell Antichita (Rome

1944) 412.

That Seneca wrote two distinct pamphlets, an //potAheosis and an Apokolokyntosis, was maintained by Th. Birt, De Sen. “ρος. et Apotheosis lucubratio (Marburg 1888) i; J. J. Hartman, Mnemosyne 44 (1916) 295-314; O. Rossbach, BPW 44 (1924)

799,

THE

LUDUS

37

I do not propose to deal with the question of style, since this is a matter of personal evaluation and opinion. We do not possess any other examples of the pamphlet literature of the time, whether by

Seneca

or by anyone else, and we have therefore no fair terms of

comparison, but to say that "the style and spirit of the piece can be readily recognized as those of the philosopher-poet in his lighter vein"? would seem, to me at least, to go far beyond the evidence. The stylistic resemblances between the Ludus and the known works of Seneca are by no means greater or more numerous than the differences, and certainly not greater than one expects in different authors writing at the same time and following the same literary fashions. Stylistically it is as impossible to deny that Seneca may have written the Ludus, as it is impossible to prove that he did. "Many men, many women, and many children" might have written such a pamphlet. Still, I think it is fair to say that, were it not for the manuscript

attribution and Dio's mention of the //pokolokyntosis, the Senecan authorship would never have appeared obvious on grounds of style alone. But the intrinsic arguments against the Senecan authorship are formidable. They are the arguments Miss Toynbee so cogently musters in her attempt to show that Seneca could not have written our pamphlet in a.p. 54, arguments that have been brushed aside rather than answered. These arguments may be summarized in the following

question: is it credible or even conceivable that an experienced man of letters, politician, and statesman, of between fifty and sixty years

of age, who has just attained a position of the greatest power on the demise of the Crown, would publish a violent lampoon on the first act of the new Government of which he is one of the most important members, and on the Speech from the Throne which he himself has

just written for his new Sovereign? This is not in the least a question of psychology,? but of the correct appraisal of a definite political situation. To suppose that Seneca's hatred of Claudius was so great

that it had to break out,*4 is surely to forget the fact that, as the ad Polybium proves, Seneca was an excellent dissembler, and was, in

any case, an ageing and experienced man of affairs, wise to the ways of Courts, no young and irresponsible hothead. To attribute to Seneca Toynbee,

83.

"They are to a considerable extent the same arguments 389-405, to show that Seneca could not have written our *Momigliano, 97. “Tacitus, Ann. 12. 8: infensus Claudio dolore iniuriae Seneca, Apokolokyntosis del Divo Claudio (Turin 1944) “lo sfogo irrefrenabile d'un animo sincero."

used by Stahr, Agrippina pamphlet. credebatur. A, Rostagni, 24, calls the pamphlet

38

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

a kind of Jekyll-Hyde personality** is a purely psychological interpretation, destitute alike of proof and probability. The comparison with Procopius and the Secret History? is good journalism, but can hardly be taken seriously. In the first place the Secret History was certainly not published at once after it was written,?? while there was absolutely no point in writing the Zudus unless it were published at once. And the whole comparison is of the Alexander of Macedon-Harry of Monmouth kind. Procopius is one of those irresponsible civil servants, who, feeling acutely their own obscurity and impotence, view their masters with scornful yet with jealous eyes: he is one of the Grevilles or the Creeveys. "For forty years he listened at the door; he heard some scandal and invented more." Seneca in A.D. 54 was as powerful as any Roman politician under the Empire could expect to be. It has generally been assumed that Seneca's object was to attack Agrippina.?? In the first place, as Miss Toynbee rightly points out,?? there is no real evidence that Seneca was hostile to Agrippina as early as October 54, although it is probable that he and Burrus, who, after all, had been closely associated with her for some years, foresaw trouble and were preparing for it. In the second place, it is difficult to see how an attack on the reign of Claudius could be interpreted as an attack on Agrippina personally rather than as an attack on the whole of the administration of Claudius, including Seneca and Burrus. And lastly, if such were its intent, the whole pamphlet would be of a really monumental ineptitude, since its purpose is so carefully concealed that some scholars? have considered it to have been written in collaboration with, rather than against, Agrippina. There is no allusion

to her, either favourable or otherwise, in the whole pamphlet.

The

only one of the many crimes of which Claudius is accused that could be ascribed

to her influence is the execution

partly justified by the writer's

acceptance

of Silanus,®

and

this is

of the official accusation

Russo, 9. %F, Martinazzoli, La Nuova Europa (Rome 1945) no. 48, p. 5, cited approvingly by Russo, 10, n. 10. 377. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire (London 1923) 2. 422.

"R. Waltz, Vie de Sénaque (Paris 1909) 198; T. Birt, N75 40 (1911) 600; K.

Münscher, PAilologus, Suppl.

16 (1922)

50; O. Viedebantt, RAM

75 (1926)

142-155.

Momigliano, 97, considers it offensive to Agrippina. Toynbee, 85; but cf. F. Gtancotti, PP 8 (1953) 56 who is probably correct in supposing that Seneca had been Agrippina's lover. In this case the hostility between the two had a personal origin. 39A,

Kurfess

in BPW

44 (1924)

1308-1310;

A. P. Ball, Satire of Seneca

13, says "non dovette riuscire per nulla sgradita ad Agrippina." “Lud, 8. 2.

19. Russo,

THE

LUDUS

39

of incest. Yet the author carefully avoids in this very context the obvious retort that, if Silanus had committed incest with his sister, Claudius had committed it with his niece! The incestuous marriage with Agrippina is not even alluded to, though we know that it

greatly scandalized contemporary society.” Is this credible if the object of the pamphlet was to discredit Agrippina? It has been suggested that the object of Seneca was to discredit the Apotheosis, which had been insisted on by Agrippina.4 Now I have already pointed out that there is absolutely no evidence that the Apotheosis was the special desire of Agrippina, rather than that of the Government as a whole. Seneca wrote the speech, and we have

no right to argue from the account of Tacitus that he wrote it with the deliberate intention of ridiculing the late Emperor. The fulsome

praises of Claudius naturally caused many of the Senators to smile, even as we ourselves have occasionally smiled at a too enthusiastic laudatio funebris or epitaph, out we have no right to assume that its author intended us to do so. Under the early Principate the demise

of the Crown must always have been a moment of acute anxiety. Who could tell what the attitude of the Praetorians, of the legions, of the urban populace, of the provinces, of the senatorial fronde was

likely to be? It was of the utmost importance to everyone concerned that the accession of Nero should take place as smoothly as possible, and the Apotheosis was the necessary conclusion to this regular accession. Self-interest alone would guarantee the unanimity of the four persons who, at that moment, formed the new Emperor's Council

of Regency. *'Unless we accept Miss Toynbee's

interpretation, 93, of the obscure and corrupt

passage Lud. 8. 3. Even so it would seem to be more a very indirect allusion than a real "back-hander." The attack is on the Ministry as a whole and therefore on Agrippina in so far as she was a member of the Ministry, but, from the point of view of the author, it would be a mistake to antagonize the Empress-Mother, whose

influence over her son would presumably continue for some time. In the circumstances the best thing to do was not to allude to her either favourably or otherwise. *iSuet., Claud. 39.

“See supra 38, deified members to ridicule, there role of Augustus

n. 38. It is certainly an attack on the readiness with which the Senate of the imperial house, for, if Claudius alone was to be kept held up was no point in introducing the Apotheosis of Drusilla. But the in the Council of the Gods clearly shows that the author is not

hostile in principle to apotheoses

as such; indeed

Augustus with that of Claudius, cf. Momigliano,

he deliberately

Claudius

contrasts

(Oxford

that of

1934) 76. It is

interesting to note that the author nowhere alludes to the Apotheosis of Julius Caesar,

and such an omission must be deliberate. Toynbee, 84, n. 4. "In lapidary inscriptions a man is not upon oath’’—nor is he, Johnson might have added, in funerary panegyrics.

40

ARBITER

OF ELEGANCE

It has been frequently asserted that Agrippina more than any of the others was vitally concerned about the Apotheosis, since it would place the adoption of Nero on an unshakable basis. Now the author of the Ludus obviously considers that the proper decree should have been a Zamnatio memoriae, the decree of the Senate of the Gods. No

doubt such a decree, with its consequent abrogation of Nero's adoption, would have been inconvenient for Agrippina and Nero, but it would have been absolutely disastrous for Seneca and Burrus. The

claims of the two former to the throne were not based on the Claudian marriage and adoption, but on their own unquestionable Julian descent.** If dynastic principles were to be followed, Nero, the greatgreat-grandson of Augustus, was undoubtedly the heir apparent;

indeed his title to the throne was a good deal better than that of Claudius himself, who married Agrippina and adopted Nero in order to strengthen his own position." Had the adoption of Nero been annulled by a decree abrogating all the acta of Claudius, such an annulment would not have in any way affected the succession; indeed, from the point of view of Agrippina, it might have simplified it, since the possible claims of Britannicus would have disappeared. For the writer of the Ludus Nero is the rightful prince beyond all question. On the other hand the positions of Seneca and Burrus would have been instantly terminated, since the former's praetorian insignia and the

latter's prefecture had been granted by Claudius. For Agrippina the Apotheosis of Claudius was at the most convenient, for Seneca and Burrus it was vital. And finally, why should Seneca, who

moment

at such a

needed the collaboration of the Senate, write a pamphlet

that, whatever else it may do, holds up the Senate collectively to public contempt, not only by ridiculing its Apotheosis of Claudius, but by reminding the reader of its even more discreditable performance in the case of Drusilla? That people will act sensibly and rationally is usually a safe assumption, unless evidence to the contrary be forthcoming. In such a peculiarly delicate and explosive situation why on earth should Seneca want to conspire against himself?

The

only

reasonable

that he wrote

explanation

the pamphlet

of the

“for fun":

Senecan

authorship

that it is merely

is

a joke—

“After the death of the two Julias, Agrippina was the only representative of the house of Germanicus (Stahr, Agrippina 66) and Nero was the reliqua suboles virilis (Tacitus, 4am. 11. 12. 1). The author of the Ludus deliberately contrasts the policy of Augustus with that of Claudius (see above, n. 44), and the accession of Nero would

thus mark the return, after the Claudian interlude, to the order of succession that Augustus himself had determined. ΤΥ, Scramuzza,

The Emperor Claudius (Cambridge,

Mass.

1940) 90-91.

THE

LUDUS

41

perhaps not in the very best taste—and nothing more, and was never intended to be taken seriously as a political pamphlet. In support of this view one could point out that most of the ferocious pasquinades on Mussolini and Fascism were invented and circulated by ostensibly loyal members of the party, frequently in high office. In a totalitarian régime such squibs are a kind of safety valve, and the Ludus is merely Seneca's way of "letting off steam." Now I find it quite impossible to believe that Seneca would ever do anything "just for fun." He undoubtedly had many qualities, both as a man and as a writer, but I fail to find any evidence whatsoever that he possessed, even in the faintest degree, a sense of humour, particularly where he himself was concerned. Not to put too fine a point on it, he seems to me to have been as tiresomely pompous as Polonius. Ánd imagination boggles at the thought of Polonius, had he lived, writing a lampoon on the death of Claudius! These, of course, are subjective and psychological considerations, and, though evidence as to character is not to be lightly dismissed, it is unwise to rely on it altogether. Fortunately there are other considerations which exclude the possibility that the author—whether Seneca or anyone else—might have written the Ludus "just for fun.”

Squibs written "just for fun” are seldom, if ever, published by their authors: they circulate among a close circle of friends in manuscript or in very limited editions, and great pains are usually taken to prevent their falling into the hands of strangers, especially into those of the authorities. The history of Wilkes's Essay on Woman, which was certainly written "just for fun," is a case in point. The presence of the Laus Neronis in the Ludus is conclusive proof that the pamphlet was published in the usual way and was expected to have a wide diffusion.*? There was absolutely no point in flattering Nero unless the writer expected or hoped that Nero would read his pamphlet. And the flattery would not have been very flattering if the work was intended to have only a very limited distribution. It is therefore clear that the writer hoped his work would have a wide circulation,

particularly in the Palace. The Ludus is not written

"for fun"; its purpose

is quite clear,

48We unfortunately do not know how such political pamphlets were published and distributed.

loud at ter of Ludus “Smart and to

I conjecture that their circulation was largely oral, they were read out

private gatherings. Their diffusion would thus depend on the groups and coteries that selected them for reading. is hoping, I believe, to have his principal circulation Set" and the personal friends of Nero, hostile both to the the old senatorial reactionaries.

the size and characThe author of the among the younger Council of Regency

42

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

flattery of the reigning Emperor and abuse of his predecessor. Of course in many cases indulging in the latter is an indirect way of achieving the former: slandering Domitian was obviously an easy way to flatter Trajan. This is true, however, only when

a new administra-

tion has explicitly or implicitly formulated an entirely new policy, or

has reversed,

or considerably

modified,

that

of the

previous

one.

At the close of the year 54, far from there having been the slightest change in policy, the retention of Claudius's ministry, the Apotheosis, and the Speech from the Throne were the most explicit declarations possible that general policy was to continue as before. Sir Robert Walpole could hardly be described as being personally devoted to the two Sovereigns whom he served, and the hatred of George II for his father was notorious and public, yet would it be credible or even conceivable that Sir Robert, while his fate hung in the balance in

1727,

should

have

written,

or

caused

to

be

written,

a violent

lampoon on the person and the administration of George I, ridiculing

the declaration which he himself had written for his new Sovereign and the Council to which it was addressed??? Manners and customs may change, but human nature does not. I submit that this is an exact

parallel; those who maintain

the Senecan

authorship of the Ludus

must be ready to answer this question in the affirmative. The impression obtained by this consideration of the pamphlet as a whole in its relation to the political situation of the time is further confirmed if we examine it in detail. Its author pokes fun at philosophers in general, and at Stoicism in particular;? he viciously

attacks the Claudian policy of admitting provincials to the Senate, and specifically adds Spaniards to Greeks, Gauls, and Britons." Surely all contemporary readers would have considered such allusions as being aimed at Seneca. It could be argued that Seneca published his lampoon anonymously,” and introduced such allusions in order to throw readers off the scent. Now it is quite possible, indeed probable, that the Ludus was formally anonymous, but, as I have pointed out, the flattery of Nero is conclusive proof that the author expected his formal anonymity to be easily discovered, especially by the Court. “The opening sentence of the address (John, Lord Hervey, Memoirs, ed. Croker, 1. 36) with its reference to my

dearest father"

and to "this melancholy occasion”

must have been as mirth-provoking as Neto's references to the providentia and sapientia of Claudius. S07 ud, 2. 2; 8. 1. δι μά, 3. 3. 98So Sedlmayer, WS 23 (1901) 181-182. If the pamphlet was anonymous, it is easy to see how some late scribe might attribute it to Seneca, the best-known author of the period.

THE

LUDUS

43

Seneca had, no doubt, very good reasons for disliking Claudius, especially since he had been obliged to write the ad Polybium, but a lampoon on Claudius was surely the best way of reminding his readers of that regrettable piece of nauseous flattery. And if he disliked Claudius, he must have positively detested Messalina and her clique, who had been responsible for his exile. Yet the author of the Ludus would appear to be definitely friendly towards the memory of Messalina, who

is depicted as an innocent victim, while the other victims

of Claudius, whose blood, so to speak, calls to Heaven for vengeance, are nearly all members of her circle and shared her fall. From this the author would appear to have been someone who had been in some way connected with the circle of Messalina, and had consequently been in disgrace ever since. Finally I might point out that the writer

obviously

approves

of the

execution

of Narcissus,

the

author

of

Messalina's fall, and we know, on the very best authority, that his execution was strongly opposed by Seneca and Burrus.5? In the controversy between Professors Toynbee and Momigliano both are right, and both, in accepting the identity of the Ludus with the Apokolokyntosis, are wrong. Miss Toynbee proves quite conclusively that Seneca cannot have written our pamphlet in a.p. 54; Momigliano proves equally conclusively that our pamphlet was undoubtedly written in a.p. 54. These two propositions may be brought into a syllogism of which the inevitable conclusion is, Seneca cannot have written our pamphlet. This examination has thus led us to formulate the following four propositions: 1. The Ludus de morte Claudii was written and published immed-

iately after the Apotheosis and the death of Narcissus, in November or December A.D. 54. 2. The Ludus is a violent attack not only on the deceased Emperor,

but also on the Council of Regency that deified him, with an openly expressed hope that the young Emperor will as soon as possible inaugurate a Golden Age (i.e., get rid of the former advisers of Claudius). 8 Russo, 9, makes a great deal of this fact. "UStahr, Agrippina 84-85.

557 5d, 11. 1, 5; 13. 5.

The list in Lud. 13. 4; the fact that the two Julias, Iustus Catonius, and others, whose death is attributed by our sources to Messalina, gather round her on the arrival of Claudius would indicate that our author does not believe the anti-Messalina

gossip preserved by our historians, which derives in great measure, directly or indirectly, from Agrippina's memoirs. 8'See above, nn. 12 and 13.

44

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

3. Seneca's Apokolokyntosis was written soon after the fall of Agrippina—very possibly, as Miss Toynbee suggests, for the Neroneia of A.D. 60—in order to blacken her character, making her appear as the poisoner of Claudius and the instigator of the Apotheosis. Directly or indirectly, it is probably the principal source for Dio's account of

the death of Claudius. 4. The Ludus cannot be by Seneca. It is not, strictly speaking, incumbent on me to suggest who the author of this now anonymous pamphlet may have been.5* I have already pointed out that many people might have written it, and that

the death of an Emperor must have been the occasion for publishing hundreds of pasquinades and lampoons. Only the lucky accident that some scribe, thumbing through an ancient Harleian Miscellany, attributed it to Seneca, has preserved it for posterity. Still, it is possible to deduce something about the author from the work itself. Pace most editors, its literary value is not great; the humour strikes me as forced and often feeble, lacking the punch and vigour of really great invectives, such as the Letters of unius. It would appear to be the work of a youngish man of considerable ability, though not quite as clever as he thinks he 1s. I have already pointed out that it reads very much like the production of a minor politician in opposition. The author is undoubtedly a member of the Senate, for which body,

however, he has the most profound contempt.

He is old enough to

remember the Apotheosis of Drusilla in A.D. 38, and would seem to have been present at the meeting of the Senate in which it was approved. He is very hostile to the Government of Claudius and to those members of it that have assumed the Regency, but has hopes of Nero. He would appear to have been connected in some way with the circle of Messalina, which explains his hostility to the régime inaugurated by Agrippina and Seneca. He is a "Romano di Roma," proud of his true Roman stock and contemptuous of freedmen, philosophers, and the new provincial nobility, but at the same time equally contemptuous of the old Roman religion, soothsayers and astrologers, pedants and advocates. He admires Virgil, Horace, and Ovid, has an extensive knowledge of Greek literature, and uses the vernacular with considerable effect.

The only person we know of—and we must bear in mind that our ignorance is far greater than our knowledge—who would in any way 58The

attribution

of the

pamphlet

to Phaedrus

ὃν

L.

Herrmann,

PAédre

et ses

fables (Leiden 1950) 84-98, seems to me destitute alike of evidence, probability, and even plausibility: cf. A. Labhardt, Gnomon 24 (1952) 94,

THE

LUDUS

45

fit this description is Petronius "Arbiter." If he was born somewhere around a.p. 20, he would have been 18 in a.p. 38 and 34 in A.p. $4, He was certainly'a Senator, but had little respect for that body. He is hostile to Seneca, to philosophers in general, to freedmen, to advocates, to schoolmasters and pedants. Though he does not mention Ovid, he admires both Virgil and Horace, and his knowledge of Greek literature is obviously extensive. He is very much a Roman and a conservative, a foe to innovation, especially from the East. In religion he is a complete agnostic, equally ready to ridicule the official religion and

the popular mystery cults. It is true that the writer of the Ludus is a politician first and foremost, and that in the Satiricon politics are conspicuous by their absence, unless we choose—erroneously, as I believe—to interpret some allusions as political references. But in A.D. 54 the writer of the Ludus was "out," while Petronius in a.p. 60 was very much "in"; and it is a commonplace of all politics that there is no greater difference in the world than that between a politician in

opposition and the same politician in office. It is also true that the Satiricon is of very much greater literary merit than the Ludus, that somewhat damp squib; but the difference is certainly not more marked

than the normal difference between the best and the worst works of any author, certainly less than that between the Ludus and the best work of Seneca, for it is a difference of quality rather than of feeling and attitude. It is fortunately unnecessary to go into the question of style; the close verbal parallels between the two works and the general resemblances in style, syntax, and vocabulary have been accurately listed by others. We have pointed out that, given the paucity of our material, such arguments are highly subjective, but we can confidently assert that the Ludus is in style and language far closer to the Satiricon

than to any known work of Seneca's, indeed, to any other surviving work of Latin literature. The authors of both works are singularly tortuous in their approach, masters in the use of allusion and innuendo. Both are capable of turning out good, if not highly inspired verse, and perfectly dreadful doggerel. Both, in verse, seem to favour the use of supernatural machinery and personification. Both, writing in the

vulgar tongue of vulgar subjects, carefully avoid smut. Both have great powers of characterization. The role of Mercury and the three Fates in the Zudus is closely paralleled by their role in the frescos in Trimalchio's house. And it would be easy to multiply the examples.

'This suggestion 59See Excursus

IV.

that Petronius is the author of the Ludus

is by

46

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

its very nature incapable of direct proof, and we have already pointed out that nothing is more difficult than the attribution of political pamphlets,

still

unable

Letters

erede editoribus of Swift,

to

produce

of "unius,

conclusive

is it any

wonder

Defoe,

proof that

and

Pope.

When

we

are

of the

authorship

of the

we

puzzled

to

are

as

the

authorship of the one pamphlet that has survived from Roman times? Stat magni nominis umbra! 1 have tried to establish my first four propositions: | advance the Petronian authorship as a possible, perhaps a probable, hypothesis.

“GAY

PETRONIUS"

Fancy and art in gay Petronius please, The scholar's learning, with the courtier s ease. Pore! CERTAIN

indulgence should be granted to all who devote

themselves to the study of novels and other products of the imagination. The imagination of their authors may—perhaps should—infect them to a greater or a lesser degree. I therefore make no

further apology for attempting a biography of Petronius. That, in so doing, I will call on my imagination to fill the enormous gaps in our information, that I will turn the slightest of hints into a valuable clue, and this again into an established fact, is both obvious and inevitable. The modern reputation of Petronius was very largely due to a novel,? and I should be highly gratified if my effort were also to appeal to Hollywood—a most unlikely event. To begin with, I shall assume as a fact what I have previously tried to prove or suggest: that the Pet-

ronius of Tacitus is the author of both the Satiricon and the Ludus de morte Claudii.

At the very outset we encounter the difficulty that not only do we know nothing certain about the date of Petronius’ birth or about his parentage, but that even his praenomen, which might furnish a clue as to his family connexions, is in dispute. At this period a consul-

ship is no infallible indication of age: even though Augustus laid down the general which one and in any the case of

principle that thirty-three was the earliest possible age at could become consul? there were numerous exceptions, case it provides merely a terminus post quem, for, except in imperial favourites, it was not usual for a man to become

δες Excursus

V.

34. Collignon, Pétrone en France (Paris 1905) 171; E. Thomas, Pétrone—l'envers de la société romaine’ (Paris 1912) 236-240. 5R, Cagnat, Cours d'épigraphie latine^ (Paris 1914) 94. *For instance: A. Vitellius, the future Emperor, born in September 4.p. 15, became consul ordinarius in A.D. 48 in the thirty-third year of his age and was succeeded by his younger brother Lucius as suffectus: cum maiori minor in sex menses successisset

Suet., Fell. 3. 47

48

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

consul until he was in his forties.» Our Petronius was undoubtedly a suffect consul in the reign of Nero, but the exact year is unknown, and

the general fog by which the problem is surrounded is rendered even more impenetrable by the fact that in the period between 4.p, 55 and 70 at least three other members of the gens Petronia attained the consulship.® As for the praenomen, the general rule is that the eldest son bears that of his father,’ but this rule is honoured

as much

in the

breach as in the observance.® Still, it is a tendency that must be kept in mind in any attempt at reconstructing the family tree of our Petronius. There is nothing in the account of Tacitus to suggest an elderly debauchee, and at the same time there is no suggestion or even innuendo that the proconsulship of Bithynia and the subsequent consulship were exceptional marks of Court favour. His position as arbiter elegantiarum seems to imply not so much that of a boon companion mixing with youths of his own age, as that of a mentor and guide, an older man whose taste, judgement, and experience were looked up to by a society of younger ones, a man, shall we say, some fifteen or twenty years older than Nero himself. The author of the Ludus--l am assuming the right to suppose that this author was Petronius— was old enough to remember the debate in the Senate on the Apotheosis of Drusilla in A.D. 38,? and he was certainly in disgrace after the fall of Messalina. All these considerations would lead to the conclusion that he was born not earNer than a.p. 15 and not later than a.p. 25, with a strong probability in favour of the years A.D. 18-20. We also know that at the time of Nero's accession Petronius was a member of the senatórial order!? and extremely wealthy. For one myrrhine vase alone he paid 300,000 sesterces.! He had estates near 5E. T. Salmon, 4 History of the Roman

World from 30 B.C. to A.D. 138% (London

1950) 42-43. SA. Degrassi, Fasti Consolari dell'Impero Romano

(Rome

1952)

16-18.

"Cagnat, Cours d'épigraphie latine 67; H. Thylander, Etude sur l'épigraphie latine

(Lund 1952) 65.

*In the case of the Vitellii (see n. 4) it is the younger son who receives his father’s

praenomen Lucius. *Of course it does not follow that he was at that time a Senator: he might have been

taken to the Senate as a boy, or might have been present as one of the inferior magistrates, perhaps as a member of the vigintivirate. Y Bithynia was a praetorian province and therefore its proconsul had to be either a

former praetor or a person who had been ad/ectus inter praetorios. UPliny,

fortune;

N.H.

37.

(7) 20: this sum

a well-to-do freedman

cash a respectable

such

is one

hundredth

as Phileros

fortune (Sat. 43. 2).

part of Trimalchio's

considered

a sum

entire

of 100,000 HS

"GAY

PETRONIUS"

49

Cumae in Campania, the richest part of Italy.? His position as arbiter elegantiarum necessarily presupposes a great fortune. It is true that certain past leaders of fashion, Brummell, notably, and D'Orsay, were not fabulously rich, but then, . . . both those gentlemen

ended their days on the Continent. There is not the slightest reason to suppose that the affairs of Petronius were at all embarrassed at the

time of his death: rather, the story of the myrrhine vase suggests that the wealth of Petronius was not unconnected with his condemnation. The bulk of this great fortune must have come to him by inheritance. Though he may have been an excellent manager and occasionally a lucky speculator, his position as a Senator prevented his indulging in any of the highly profitable if somewhat disreputable ways of getting rich quick, described by Trimalchio. Unlike other members of the gens Petronia, he did not hold for long periods important posts in the imperial service. The proconsulship of Bithynia cannot have been at that time very lucrative, and a suffect consulship

was

merely

and a considerable one at that. Nero, of

an expense,

course, was both able and willing to reward his favourites, but the favour of Petronius was due to his wealth, not his wealth to his favour. Bearing in mind the certain fact that he was a member of a prominent and extremely wealthy senatorial family, we can now turn to

the question of his praenomen, a question that most of his editors have studiously

avoided.

Leidensis,

the

No

extant

inscription

of

manuscript,

which—C.

apart

Petronii

from

Arbitri

Scaliger's

Afrani

Satyrici—is undoubtedly due to Scaliger himself, gives ἃ praenomen, nor do any of the later authors and grammarians who quote him or his writings. The second Medicean MS of the Annals at 16. 17. 1 reads: . . . Annaeus Mela, Cerialis Anicius, Rufrius Crispinus ac Petronius...; it begins the following chapter, 18, with the words De C. Petronio. . . . The omission of the praenomen in the first passage certainly appears very strange," and many editors have thought that the conjunction ae had attracted the C (aius) attested by the ΤῊΣ account of Tacitus, “πη. 16. 19. 1, implies that the order from Nero reached him while he was at a villa of his own. Prominent among the figures in the causa

liberalis of Iusta, recovered from the waxed tablets of Herculaneum (G. Pugliese Carratelli, PP 3 (1948) 165-184 are a family of Petronii, evidently, from their cognomina, freedmen. The apparent head of the family, C. Petronius Stephanus, might well be a freedman of our Petronius or of his father. Query: did Petronius use some

of his own freedmen for his character-sketches of such people? HThe other three victims are identified by their cognomina. The passage proves conclusively that "Arbiter" was not a formal cognomen, and that our Petronius, unlike the other three Petronian consulars of this time, had no cognomen. If there is no cognomen the praenomen should be used. In the case of Petronius Priscus (4an. 15. 71) Tacitus gives the cognomen

and omits the praenomen.

50

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

second passage and have emended accordingly. On the other hand Nipperdey, finding that both Pliny the Elder (NV.H. 37. [7]. 20) and Plutarch (de Adulatore et Amico, Mor, p. 60e), undoubtedly referring to our

Petronius, give the praenomen

as T(itus), emended

the ac to

Titus), and, in the second passage, omitted the praenomen altogether, considering it due to the preceding letter e. Just to make matters more complicated, the scholiast on Juvenal 6. 638 mentions ἃ Pontía Publi Petroni filia, quem Nero convictum in crimine coniurationis damnavit. We shall examine this passage later: so far as the praenomen is concerned everyone has treated this scholiast with the contempt he undoubtedly deserves.4 On the whole, the older writers and the editors of Petronius favour the praenomen Caius, but the two most recent writers on the subject, Hosius and Kroll,^ unhesitatingly choose Titus. We might, of course, observe that Pliny, who—or whose codices— blundered over the praenomen of the famous prefect of Egypt," is by no means infallible in such matters: but the best way of approaching the problem is through the wealth of prosopographical information so accurately and so clearly marshalled in the Prosopographia Imperii Romani" and the Real-Encyclopádie.? To these lists we must now add the various Petronii mentioned in the Herculaneum Tablets? even though most of these are obviously either freedmen or descendants of freedmen. Now of all the members of the gens Petronia whose praenomina are known and who lived in the last century of the Republic and the first century of the Empire only three bear the praenomen Titus: a T. Petronius P. f. Fadia, a member of Pompeius Strabo's famous council of war before Asculum in the Social War,? a T.

Petronius Niger, suffect consul before A.p. 70,?' and a prefect of Egypt MExcept, Consolari

perhaps, 18) P.

(C.

A.

Degrassi

?) Petronius

who,

without

any

explanation,

prints

(Fasfi

Arbiter.

SSchanz-Hosius, Gesch. d. Rom, Lit. 24 (Munich 1935) 501; Kroll, RE (1937) 1201. Pliny, N.H. 6. 181: P. [sic] Petronio. UP, von Rohden and H. Dessau, Prosopographia Imperii Romani (Berlin

19.

1

1898)

3. 25-31, nos. 196-242: I shall quote this volume as PZR followed by the number of the entry. 'SRE 19. 1 (1937). 1193-1234: quoted as RE followed by the entry number. Giovanni Pugliese Carratelli has published thirty of these tablets in PP 1 (1946) 379-385 (1- XII), and 3 (1948), 165-184 (XIII- XXX, the files of the causa liberalis

of Iusta): quoted as TH followed by volume and page. RE 93; CIL 6. 37045 = ILS 8888. 2TH 1. 381, the subscription to a document actum Neapoli pr. Idus Iulias/9. Manlio Tarquitio Saturnino/T. Petronio Nigro cos. Since Manlius was proconsul of

Africa in 72, the joint consulship should be earlier than Vespasian; Degrassi, Fasti Consolari 17.

"GAY

PETRONIUS"

who visited the Colossus of Memnon there are 9 Caii? of whom two Egypt, 3 Publii,^ father, son, and of whom one was consul in A.D. 81, in Galatia ca. A.p. 54, 2 Lucii? Cnaeus.? From this examination prominent members of the family

51

in a.p. 92.2 Of the other 23,

were consulars and one prefect of grandson, all consulars, 5 Marcii,'s 2 Quintii,”® of whom one was legate one Aulus, a consular, and one it would seem to follow that the in the Julio-Claudian period fav-

oured the praenomina Caius and Publius; there is therefore a strong probability that the reading of the Medicean Tacitus is correct and that the Arbiter's name was Caius. A study of the prosopography will also enable us to conjecture

something about the history of the family itself. Of Etrusco-Umbrian origin, it came to Rome after the Hannibalic war? was evidently enrolled in the equestrian order, and kept its Umbrian estates. That its members had business relations with the East is indicated by the fact that a C. Petronius, perhaps a distant ancestor of the Arbiter, was sent to Asia with the praetorian L. Appuleius in 156 s.c. to mediate between the Kings of Pergamon and Bithynia,®' and by the mention of a L. Petronius in an inscription in Delos.? A M. Petronius was sufficiently important in 145 s.c. to be mentioned by Livy.? Then came the Social War and we have seen how one member of the family took an active part in the defence of the family estates; he cannot have lost by it. We find a Petronius as one of the military tribunes in the Parthian expedition of Crassus; he may have owed his. appointment

to the connexion of his family with the East. A M.

Pet-

ronius was a centurion in Caesar's VIII legion and died heroically 2Stein, RE 68 and Die Praefekten von Aegypten (Bern 1950) 46: he must have been, of course, a member of the equestrian, not the senatorial, order. Rohden and Dessau

in PIR 222 suggested that a T. Petronius T. f. Priscus mentioned in an Ostian inscription (07. 14. 4459 = ILS 1442) might have been the father of the Petronius Priscus

mentioned

by

Tacitus

dan.

15.

71,

but

Stein

in RE

54 points

out

that

epigraphically the inscription cannot be earlier than the time of Hadrian. "RE 21, 22, 51, 79. The other five are the freedmen mentioned in the Herculaneum Tablets,

TH 3. 184.

* RE 24, 74, 75. URE 34, 42, 80, 90, 94. "RE 78, 95. URE 65, 88. RE 41. MRE 23a. 9y"Münzer in RE 19. 1. 1193; ¢f. supra 17, n. 54. 9 Polybius 32. 16. 5: RE 86; Broughton, Magistrates 1. 448. 2RE 87. "Livy, Oxy. per. 52150: RE 89; Broughton, Magistrates 1. 470. Rossbach's supplement is quite uncertain; Münzer suggests that he may have played some part in?the

Lusitanian war. "Plutarch, Crassus 30-31. 2. 230.

Cf. Polyaenus

7. 41; RE

89; Broughton,

Magistrates

52

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

while encouraging his soldiers at Gergovia in 52 n.c.55 Tt is tempting to suppose that Caesar rewarded the centurian's heroism by favouring the career of some close relation of his, a brother, perhaps, or a nephew, and that it was this Petronius who was privy to the conspiracy and later supported Brutus and Cassius. So flagrant an instance of ingratitude would explain why Antony expressly omitted him from the amnesty which he granted in 41 B.c.% Other members of the family were wise enough to steer clear of politics during such stormy times, and devoted themselves to the improvement of their financial position. To anyone who could command considerable sums of ready cash, the proscriptions must have furnished even greater opportunities of getting rich quick than the Directoire, and in much the same way. An astute member of the family bought up the estates of the proscribed at a fraction of their value, and so, perhaps, acquired those Campanian properties which, in whole or in part, eventually descended to the Arbiter. This person will thus have become one of the leading members of the equestrian order and, supporting Octavian like most other equestrians, will presumably have been intelligent enough to underwrite the contracts for Octavian's army. By the end of the war he had become so influential that he could eventually secure from Augustus the Prefecture of Egypt, probably the most lucrative post in the Empire, for his son Caius, With Caius Petronius, prefect of Egypt ca. 24-21 B.c., the conqueror of the Ethiopians, the family emerges from its political and administrative obscurity, and passes from the equestrian to the senatorial order. It seems also to have divided into two branches, one that bore the cognomen Umber or Umbrinus, probably from the old Umbrian estates of the family, and the other, politically rather more

prominent,

that became

extinct

under

Nero.

On

the basis of the

material collected in the Prosopographia and the Real-Encyclopédie I propose this tentative stemma. * BG 7. 50. 4-6; RE 90. “Appian,

BC 5. 15; RE

2. 494, implicitly—by

85. His status is quite uncertain.

Broughton,

not including him in his list of Senators—and

Magistrates

H. Hill, The

Roman Middle Class (Oxford 1952) 196, n. 1, explicitly consider him a member of the equestrian order. Appian merely states that he "was privy to the conspiracy,"

not that he was actually one of the conspirators. On the other hand Antony's implacability would suggest that he played an important role in the plot and he may well have been given senatorial rank by Caesar. Query: could he have been the pro-

poser of the obscure

Lex

Petronia de praefectis

earlier than 32 s.c. (Broughton,

Leges 162.

publicae

municipiorum

Magistrates 2. 474;

which

is certainly

Niccolini, Fasti 444; Rotondi,

439)? Cf. supra, p. 17, n. 58, and G. Bagnani, Phoenix 7 (1953) VHill Roman Middle Class 199.

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54

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

Notes on ihe Stemma

1. C. Petronius must have been born between 70 and 60 B.c. since he was prefect in 24 p.c. and his younger son began his official career in 19 B.c. The cognomen** of this younger son and the pride with which he refers to the gens Turpilia on his coins would indicate that his mother was a Turpilia and that she was an heiress. 2. Petronius Umbrinus was a member of the board of curatores locorum publicorum The members of this particular board as given by CIL 6. 1266 — ILS 5939 were T. Quinctius Crispinus Valerianus (cos. suf. 4.0. 2), C. Calpetanus Statius Rufus, C. Pontius Paelignus (legatus pro praetore iterum under Tiberius), C. Petronius Umbrinus, and M, Crassus Frugi (cos. ord. in a.p. 27). The names would be listed in order of seniority, beginning with the chairman, a senior consular, the other members being presumably of praetorian or at least quaestorian rank. Since the senior member of the board had been consul in A.D. 2 and the junior would not be consul till a.p. 27, the date of this particular board would seem to be ca. a.p. 18-20. If this be the case, the identification of C. Petronius Umbrinus with the C. Petronius cos. suf. A.D. 25 would be practically certain (contra, R. Hanslik RE 22, and PIR

197), and he would have

been

born

ea. 15 B.c. He

was

therefore the grandson rather than the son of the prefect of Egypt (so Rohden and Dessau in PJR) and, given the praenomen, probably the eldest son of the eldest son. On the division of the immense wealth of C. Petronius the elder branch will have received the ancestral and respectable estates in Umbria (whence the cognomen), while the cadet or Turpilian branch will have received the rest. We cannot tell whether the Campanian estates came originally from lucky speculations during the proscriptions, or formed part of the dowry of Turpilia. Petronius Umbrinus might even be the younger son of Turpilianus I

and brother of P. Petronius, though the cognomen suggests rather a different branch of the family. 3. P. P. Nigrinus is probably the same person as the L. Pontius Ni(grinus) who was praetor in A.p. 20 (PZR 604) and possibly the son 381 assume that Turpilianus is a matronymic and not an adoptive cognomen. Since the praenomen is Publius, were the latter hypothesis adopted, we should be be obliged to postulate his adoption by an otherwise completely unknown P. Petronius.

As a younger,

possibly

the second, son of C.

ronymic cognomen and his grandfather's praenomen. Petronius the prefect must have been a P. Petronius.

$90n this board c. Mommsen,

Petronius

In this

Staatsrecht 23. 993, n. 4.

he would

case

the

take

a mat-

father of C.

"GAY

PETRONIUS"

55

of the Pontius Paelignus who was a senior colleague of Umbrinus on the board of curatores, in which case the close connexion between the

two families ‘would be explained. His adoption or adrogation must have taken place between a.p. 20 and 30, perhaps in 25 during the

consulship of Umbrinus. 4. For the 5. Niger's Nigrinus and easily be the Nigrinus had been born ca.

two Pontias see Excursus VI. cognomen indicates a connexion with Petronius Pontius since he was consul between a.p. 60 and 7040 he can son. The momen would indicate that he was born after been adopted by Umbrinus, that is to say he will have A.D. 26.

6. Umber's cognomen shows that he belonged to this branch of the family. Rohden and Dessau in PZR and Groag in RE think he was the son of Umbrinus. Since he was not a consular when legate of Galatia under Nero, he must have been very much younger than Pontius Nigrinus and roughly about the same age as Turpilianus II, Niger, and the Arbiter. The probabilities would therefore seem to be in favour of his being the grandson rather than the son of Umbrinus

and he will have been born ca. a.p. 20. This would agree with the age of his son who must have been born ca. a.p. 40. 7. The Petronia who was first married to A. Vitellius, the future Emperor, and later—but before a.p. 70—to Cn. Cornelius Dolabella, was the daughter of a consular." Rohden and Dessau in PZR 198

suggested that she was the daughter of P. Petronius P. f., but Groag in the second edition of PZR (2. 1347) makes her the grand-daughter rather than the daughter of the consul of a.p. 19, in which case she must have been the daughter of Turpilianus II. Both these hypotheses

are rightly rejected by R. Hanslik, RE 97, who points out that if P. Petronius is too old to have been her father, the second Turpilianus is much too young, and that she must be the daughter of someone who

held the consulship after A.p. 19 and before a.p. 61. This lower limit must be raised considerably, for her son by her second marriage was Ser. Dolabella Petronianus, cos. A.D. 86, who cannot have been born later than A.p. 50, We therefore need a Petronius who held the consulship in the second decade of the century, and the only one we know of is C. Petronius Umbrinus. Petronia will have been born ca. A.p. 25, have married Vitellius ca. A.D. 40, and have been divorced and re-married to Dolabella before the end of that decade. *0Cf, supra 50, n. 21. “Tacitus, Hist. 2. 64; Suet. Fitell. 6.

56

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

8. P. Petronius Turpilianus was triumyir monetalis in 19 n.c.** and must

consequently have

been

about

twenty years old at the time.

Since we have no reason to suppose that he fell into disgrace, there is a strong presumption that he died young. In such a case it would be

quite in character for Augustus son.

to favour the career of his eldest

9. I have postulated the existence of a C. Petronius, a younger brother

of P. Petronius and the father of Petronius "Arbiter" following a suggestion of Mr. Freeman Adams. The absence of any formal cognomen is significant and it would seem to exclude the only other possibility, i.e, that the Arbiter was the son of Umbrinus. The triumvir monetalis will have had two sons, of whom

the elder took his

father's praenomen and the younger his grandfather's. Neither had formal cognomina. 10. I have given that embarrassing phantom A. Petronius Lurco as a son to P. Petronius P. f. on the evidence of the praenomen. P. Petronius married the daughter of a Vitellia,# and the praenomen Aulus was characteristic of the Vitellii. It is evident that both families were closely related by marriage. It is impossible to say whether Turpilianus or Lurco was the elder: the consulship dates would favour the seniority of Lurco, but at this period they are unreliable except within very wide margins. I have ignored that even more embarrassing and possibly non-existent phantom M. Petronius Lurco (RE 42). *

Our C. Petronius C. f. P. n. was born somewhere round a.p. 20, probably on the paternal estate near Cumae, where he was destined to die. In his earliest childhood, passed on these estates, he will have

observed and absorbed all the details of Campanian life, both rural and urban, which he was to describe so brilliantly later. He will have associated with the family freedmen, who were creating their own society

in

the

neighbouring

towns,“

and

may

even

have

stayed

with them on a visit.“ His earliest education will have been received from a private tutor, for whom he cannot have had much respect, to judge by his contempt for such people in the Sasiricon, that anticipates “So. K. Pink, The Triumviri Monetales (New York 1953) 45; Mattingly and Sydenham, The Roman Imperial Coinage 1. 47. 69 prefer 18 a.c. “Tacitus, “πη 3. 49. 2. “Cf, supra 49, n. 12. *That persons of a superior social status might occasionally stay with freedmen is indicated

by Sat. 77. 5: Scaurus cum huc venit, nusquam

mavoluit hospitari, et habet

ad mare paternum hospitium. Did Petronius, on a visit to Herculaneum, stay with C. Petronius Stephanus?

"GAY

PETRONIUS"

57

Quintilian's doubts on the value of private education. His further education will have been continued in Rome under the best masters of rhetoric, among whom he may have even heard the elder Seneca.

For the regular system of rhetorical education, of which the elder Seneca was the chief representative, he conceived a profound dislike, which remained with him all his life. Given his birth and the position of his family, he was naturally destined for the senatorial career, and the influence of his family and especially that of his uncle would have seemed to assure the young man a brilliant future in the public service. Our young Caius, however, notwithstanding his family and education, perhaps indeed owing to his family and education, was developing into a very singular and definitely disconcerting young man. His

abilities were not in doubt, but he had no appreciation of that "High Seriousness" on which Augustus and Tiberius had tried to base the Principate. Enjoying life to the full, he viewed it with an amused and tolerant, but at the same time highly realistic, eye. He was

diverted by the way the new families that had “‘come up" during the civil wars, such as his own and the Vitellii, gave themselves the airs

of ancient nobility and looked down on the class from which they had sprung. He was also conscious of the complete futility of senatorial

politics. In a.p. 38 he accompanied his father and his uncle to the Senate and listened to the debates on the Apotheosis of the Emperor's sister Drusilla. The utter silliness of the whole proceedings made a profound and ineradicable impression, and he gave vent to some

caustic remarks. The reign of Gaius was not one in which it was safe for even a very young man

to show his cleverness and originality at the expense of

the Emperor or the imperial family. All the more distinguished Petronii meeting in family conclave were horrified at the attitude of the young man, and decided, as families have always decided in similar circumstances, that foreign travel was far and away the best thing to complete a young man's education. After all, if he did get into

scrapes in Athens or Rhodes, it would be far easier to hush them up. And, anyhow, the family could not be held responsible. So in the spring of A,p. 39 Caius left Rome in the suite of his uncle Publius who was going out to assume the government of Syria." No doubt theuncle gave his nephew some sound advice in the style of Polonius: as his term of office in Syria was to prove, he was one of the best of the Roman * Lud, passim, and Sat. 88. 9. ‘7For the date, spring A.D. 39, R. Hanslik, RE appointed one of his uncle’s triduni militum.

19. 1. 1200. He may

have been

58

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

governors of the time, but to his nephew he appeared, perhaps not entirely without reason, an egregious stuffed shirt and a crashing bore.* Caius may have accompanied Uncle Publius as far as Antioch and enjoyed for a short time the gay life of the principal city of Asia, and he may even have gone to Egypt to visit the family properties there,*?

before membership of the Senate would render such a visit difficult, if not impossible. But, like all good Romans, he went to Rhodes and Athens to complete his education. There he devoted himself to desultory reading of a miscellaneous kind. He seems to have studied chiefly Homer, the Lyric Poets, Sophocles, and Euripides—not, apparently, Aeschylus or the writers of Comedy, Old or New— Demosthenes and Hyperides, and toyed with Plato, the Socratics, and philosophy in general,®° but his subsequent references to philosophers

are all uncomplimentary. He also, probably more for the fun of the thing than anything else, played with the various sciences and pseudosciences;®! at Rhodes the memory of Tiberius may have induced him to dabble in astrology, of which both the claims and the jargon tickled his sense of humour.” This tour of Greece and the Levant, not very

different from that of countless other Romans of similar social position, had one unusual result. It awakened in Petronius a keen and, in the ancient world, unusual interest in the visual arts.9 His interest in painting and sculpture is in marked contrast with that of other Romans who, if they mention such matters at all, just repeat the com*On

S

14. 2: komo Claudiana lingua disertus.

Lud.

estates

Petronian

the

in

Egypt

cf.

Wilcken,

CArest.

363,

365,

Pap.

368;

Rylands 2. 127; Pap. Giessen 101. 6. Of these some were to become imperial property; Rostovtzeff, Soc. and Econ. History, 573-574. *'Besides Homer, who is directly and indirectly referred to throughout, Petronius in the Satiricon mentions Sophocles and Euripides (2. 3), Pindar and the nine Lyric Poets (2. 4), Thucydides who is coupled with Hyperides (2. 8), Demosthenes (2. 5 and 5. 14), Plato (2. 5), Epicurus (132. 15, line 7, cf. Lud. 8. 1), the Socratics (5. 13). "!In 88. 3-4, he refers to Democritus, Eudoxus, and Chrysippus as scientists, in

40. 1, to Hipparchus and Aratus as astrologers. "On the astrology in the Satiricon see J.G. W.M. Astrologie

1927),

(Amsterdam

a useful

collection

De Vreese, Petron 39 und die

of material,

but vitiated

by

the

fundamental defect of taking Trimalchio's astrological lore seriously. Of course Petronius is poking fun at, rather than satirizing, the whole mumbo jumbo of the "adepts."

As

Housman

unkindly

but

truthfully

puts

it (Manilius

1. 94,

n.)

De

Vreese tries to prove "that Trimalchio was an adept and Petronius a fool." But the fact

that

De

Vreese

takes

the passage

seriously

is in itself proof

that

Petronius

was very well acquainted with the technical jargon. "On this aspect of Petronius see G. Beccati. Arte e Gusto negli Scrittori. Latini (Firenze

1951)

160-191.

"GAY

monplaces

of Greek

PETRONIUS"

art criticism. Even

59

Cicero's attitude to the fine

arts is not unlike that of those many contemporaries who choose their pictures to match the chintz.*

of our own

He soon returned to Rome and, probably in a.p. 45,5 he became quaestor and consequently a member of the Senate. Claudius was now Emperor and for that extremely able ruler Petronius conceived a violent and quite understandable dislike. He was a pedant, and Petronius by now was a sworn foe to pedantry of all kinds; he was uncouth and inelegant, and Petronius was very much ot a dandy; as a speaker he was a bore, and Petronius obviously disliked bores. He was present when Claudius inflicted on the long-suffering Senate his great oration on the admission of Gallic Senators, and Petronius never

forgave him for it.5* But if political life was proving more and more boring and unattractive, there were compensations. If the Emperor was boring and unattractive, his wife was neither. She was, moreover, just about Petronius' own age, elegant and amusing, fond of life and society: she too found Claudius a bore and shared Petronius' dislike

of Seneca, philosophers, and "the High Seriousness.'5? It is quite natural that he should have formed part of the society that surrounded her. Then, in 48, came the crash. As Lucien Debray so rightly put it: C'est. incroyable combien ces maris, que nous trouvons cependant si M Ep.

ad Att.

1. 4. 3, and

the passages

collected

by

Beccati,

Arte e Gusto,

nos.

9-85. S5Since I am assuming throughout that he is the author of the Luaus, he must have become quaestor before the fall of Messalina in 48 and must then have been at least twenty-five years of age. It is quite possible that he was quaestor the very year of the disaster, when his relatives, the Vitellii brothers, held the consulship, or he might even have been praetor that year, in which case he would have been

born in 18. 8 Lug. 3. 3; Claudius’ speech

that begins in 7. 4 and is interrupted by the great

lacuna, was probably a parody of his style. Mueller-Graupa in ZSS 42 (1921) 31-41,

makes the plausible but unprovable suggestion speech.

that it was a parody of this very

57The date of her birth is not given by any ancient author, but since she must have

been the grand-daughter of che Messalla Barbatus in 4.0. 12 (Rohden-Dessau

who died during his consulship

in PZR 3. 380, no. 161) and had already given

birth to

Octavia when Britannicus was born in a.p. 41 (Groag-Stein, PZR! 2. pp. 186, 267), she herself must [42], n. 4).

880.

have been born ca. a.p. 20 (cf. Furneaux,

Neugebauer’s

The Annals of Tacitus 2,

oditer dictum on “the excessive development

of the spirit of

heroism which must often have made life in Greece hell on earth” (The Exact Sciences

in Antiquity [Princeton 1952] 71) could certainly be applied to the ideals of Augustus and Tiberius, not to mention Seneca!

60

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

ridicules,

prennent facilement l'avantage sur nous, especially when

husband

happens

to be Caesar Augustus.

The

the

ridiculous old man

bestirred himself, and that brilliant society was scattered. Petronius, no doubt, passed some anxious weeks, but he was not deeply committed and had powerful relations who, however much they may personally

have disapproved of his conduct, for the prestige of the family could not allow one of its members to fall a victim. Uncle *'Polonius," his relative Aulus, consul that very year, even his repulsive lawyercousin Turpilianus I1, who, attentive to his father’s precepts, was

busily engaged in making a name for himself as a sound reliable fellow, intervened with the authorities. Petronius was passed over as too insignificant a person to bother about—that in itself was galling, only slightly less so than exile. His career, however, was at an end, and Petronius suddenly found, as others have found since,9? that it is all very well and good to talk about business being such a frightful bore: it is very pleasant to be in office. And it was simply infuriating to see that fellow Seneca, that terrible hypocrite and really deplorable writer,“ a fellow of absolutely no taste, being recalled from exile, restored to high favour, and appointed Head of the Household to the Heir Apparent. Petronius could not, however, be ignored for too long. Nature had endowed him to a superlative degree with the Art of Pleasing, and he had sacrificed to the Graces. His manners, his wit, his conversation, the certainty of his taste, the extent and variety of his knowledge, his inimitable capacity for telling an amusing story, "the scholar's learning and the courtier's ease," made him welcome at a Court which, given the age of Claudius and the control of Seneca, was every day getting duller and duller. Above all others he fascinated the young Nero who saw in him the ideal high-bred man of the world. 5°] feel certain that Petronius would have considered repulsive anyone whose activity in Britain could be described by Tacitus, 4gr. 16, as exorabilior et delictis hostium novus eoque paenitentiae mitior and Ann. 14. 39, is non inritato hoste neque lacessitus honestum pacis nomen segni otio imposuit. V''Our Friend Huntingdon may say what he pleases, but I will be hanged, if he does not long most miserably for a Court station again." Henry, Lord Pembroke to

Sir W. Hamilton, April 16, 1774; Lord Herbert, Henry, Elizabeth and George (London 1939) 44. "The poem on the Civil War would alone be enough to show how Petronius disapproves

of the

literary

theory

hostility is evident throughout is Cicero; cf. 5. 20 and 55. 5.

and

practice

of the

Senecan

coterie,

but

this

the work. For Petronius the model of "eloquence"

"GAY

PETRONIUS"

61

Here at last was someone who was no pedant, who really appreciated not only Greek literature but also Greek art, whose wildest extravagances were elegant and refined, not like those awful banquets that

alone could kindle a spark of interest in the old Emperor.® All adolescents are fascinated by a real or a reputed roué. Since all mention of Messalina was naturally forbidden at Court, Nero will have asked for nothing better than to hear about her from one of her intimates. Agrippina and Seneca may have had considerable misgivings, but they could not very well do anything about it. Petronius was undoubtedly a very delightful fellow. He was not in politics and could not be a danger to themselves; indeed, it was all to the good if he kept the lad amused without any thought of business. In October 54 the change came. The old and ailing Emperor had a stroke from which he did not recover. The death ‘“‘was sudden, unexpected and mysterious." It was, however, a great relief to everyone,** and to no one more so than to Petronius. The rule of the Empire had passed from an old man, pedantic, inelegant, suspicious, caring for

nothing but his files and his books, to a lad full of high spirits and good intentions, keen on art and literature, ready to reward true merit and encourage true culture. He would soon break away from his

mother's apron-strings and get rid of all the old guard of the previous reign, notably Seneca, Burrus, and the freedmen. The death of Narcissus, following close on that of his master, seemed to lend

support to the Opposition’s hopes that the Golden Age was at hand and that soon the inhabitants of the political wilderness would enter the promised land. What was their disappointment when the first act

of the new

administration

was

to propose

of the

the Apotheosis

deceased Emperor, tantamount to a declaration that general policy was to continue unchanged. And what made matters worse was that Nero's Speech from the Throne had obviously been composed by Seneca, in his very worst style, full of the usual platitudes and hypocrisy. The commendation of Claudius’ interest in the liberal arts was just the last straw! Nero was bright enough and intelligent enough

to have composed his own speech: that he had not was proof that Seneca

still remained

in control

and

the

hopes

"Suet, Claud. 33. Petronius may have been introduced Domitia Lepida, Messalina’s mother and Nero’s aunt.

of Petronius to the new

were

Court

“Cf. G. Bagnani, Phoenix 1 (1946) 18-19.

“Ce fut un soulagement universel: R. Waltz, L’ Apocologuintose (Paris 1934) ii. *5No reason to doubt the explicit statement of Tacitus; cf. supra 31, n. 16.

by

62

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

completely shattered. He was unable to conceal his anger and disappointment and, immediately after the meeting of the Senate, wrote a ferocious lampoon on the whole proceedings.

Anger

and disappointment

did not, however,

entirely overcome

judgement and prudence. He was now in his early thirties and wise to

the ways of Courts. The lampoon was violent indeed, but was also extremely neat and, politically, extremely clever. The praise of Nero was sufficiently fulsome without being nauseatingly extravagant, and the special commendation of his personal beauty and voice showed an intimate understanding of the young prince's character. The intervention of Apollo was a neat hint that the Muses placed themselves under

his protection. And the exhortation to see to it that the new reign should not be dull and boring and that justice should be done was a direct suggestion to get rid of Seneca-trained rhetoricians and let real

jurists have a chance. The interlude is short, but all the more effective for that, and throughout the underlying suggestion is "Nero: be a King!" At the same time the attack on the Ministry was conducted with extreme prudence. It was indirect, through Claudius himself, and, whatever the Ministry might say, or make Nero say, in the Senate, it would find it difficult, even dangerous, to justify in the Closet the

heroic virtues of the late ruler. The display of "Messalina Martyrs” was a broad hint that the survivors expected to be restored to favour, but any reference to the Empress-Mother was carefully avoided. So were all direct references to Seneca, though there were jibes at philoso-

phers and Romanized

Spaniards, and bitter attacks on rhetorician-

trained causidici. Though Rome was flooded during the Saturnalia with lampoons on the late Emperor, this was by far the neatest and most brilliant. It was naturally brought to the attention of Seneca, a good enough journalist and man of letters himself to appreciate its skill. Though perhaps anonymous, there could be no doubt as to the

authorship. There is a fundamental and self-evident political maxim that patronage should be used only to reward loyal supporters, never to buy opponents. À minister is doomed should a rumour spread that more is to be gained by opposing his measures than by supporting them. The position of Seneca, and indeed of the whole Cabinet, was, however,

peculiar

and

delicate.

To

prosecute

the

writer

would

be

legally difficult and politically embarrassing. What could he be charged with? He had professed the most unbounded loyalty to the new Sovereign. He considered “Stahr, Agrippina 335,

Claudius

a ridiculous old pedant; so,

"GAY

PETRONIUS"

63

privately, did everyone else. Since Claudius was now undoubtedly a God ex §.C., the pamphlet was clearly sacrilegious; but it was a wellestablished principle that deorum iniuriae dis curae." Besides, Nero obviously liked and admired him: it would be most unfortunate to have a fight in the Closet so early in the reign. A serious struggle was looming with Agrippina and her party, and the attitude of the Sover-

eign himself would be the deciding factor. It would be even more unfortunate if, at such a time, a first-class pamphleteer were free to snipe at the Government. Seneca, Burrus, and their supporters decided that,

on the whole, the best thing for everyone would be leave Italy as soon as possible. After a meeting of the Senate, perhaps the one held of the Armenian embassy,® as every one was leaving, his arm taken by Seneca, who asked him to walk back

for Petronius to for the reception Petronius found to the Palatine.

The minister was exceedingly affable on this stroll along the Sacred Way;

he was overjoyed at this lucky and wholly unforeseen chance

to have a nice chat with someone he never saw enough of. He had always had the utmost admiration for Petronius! lively genius and would have liked to see more of him, but "Politics, my dear fellow,

always these damned politics!’ Personally, he fully agreed late Emperor had been the shabbiest of men, but “La Raison was always paramount. The Apotheosis had been insisted Agrippina, and of course there was no use trying to argue with

that the d'État" upon by women,

one had only to see what had happened today. But soon everything would be changed, merit would be rewarded wherever found, and no

one, not even

the former

friends of Messalina,

would

be ignored.

Petronius must not think that these were the usual empty professions of a politician; the minister was absolutely determined to do something

for him. Would he consider the government of Bithynia? “ΟΥ̓ course, my dear fellow, I know it is infinitely below your merits, but it just happens to be the only position at my disposal just now!" After all, the family

had

an old connexion

with

the province,®

and,

with

a

Parthian war in the offing, it would become an important base of supplies. Would Petronius think it over? Of course, given the situation, it would be imperative for the new proconsul to get to Nicomedia at once.?? *TTacitus, dun, 1. 73. 887674. 13. 5; Henderson, Nero 59. Cf. supra 51. "In this reconstruction I burke the real difficulty which is that, since Bithynia is a praetorian province, Petronius must have been at some time praetor. Of course the favour of Messalina

may

have promoted

him

early

to the praetorship

and

he

64

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

It was a clever move. Whatever might happen, Petronius would be away from Rome during a critical year. Besides, a fellow like that, a man about town with no administrative experience, was sure to make a mess of things, and therefore, on his return, could be got rid of by a prosecution for maladministration. Petronius, of course, saw through it all, but accepted without the slightest hesitation. He too was in an awkward position, and it might not be a bad idea to leave Rome for a year. A storm was brewing in the Government, and everything would

depend on being able to choose the winning side. This would be much easier in a year's time, when the forces of the two parties would be more clearly displayed. He felt quite confident that he could deal with the problems of a twopenny-halfpenny province like Bithynia, and it might be quite fun. A year's absence from Court might tend to increase his favour rather than diminish it. There was not much danger of his being forgotten. Nero, after a steady diet of Agrippina, Seneca, and Burrus, especially when they were all squabbling among themselves, would appreciate all the more the qualities of Petronius, regret his absence, and welcome his return. He left for Nicomedia in

the spring. Much to everyone's surprise, his administration was a great success. Actually, this should not have surprised anybody. Petronius had, to a superlative degree, all the qualities to be found in any good colonial administrator: a keen sense of humour and proportion, an interest in

and sympathy with all sorts and conditions of men, a vast personal fortune, and a total lack of zeal. One cannot imagine him pestering the home government for instructions on how to treat religious fanatics or deal with municipal extravagance and incompetence. His easy-going yet efficient rule was immensely popular—it was still remembered in the time of Tacitus—and he too enjoyed himself thoroughly. He renewed his acquaintance with that curious yet highly diverting animal, the Levantine, and collected a fund of excellent after-dinner stories. He returned to Rome the following year with a tremendous reputation. There was no question of a prosecution: even Seneca welcomed his return. may have been praetor, rather than quaestor in the very year of the crash; or Seneca, in his anxiety to get him out of Rome, may have obtained his adlection inter praetorios. 7Such as, perhaps, the Pergamene Boy and the Matron of Ephesus. A. Cabaniss in CP 49 (1954) 98-102 points out some "vague similarities" between the story of the

Matron of Ephesus and the account of the Crucifixion. If these similarities are anything more than coincidences— which seems to me doubtful— Petronius may possibly have heard some vague accounts of the Crucifixion while in Bithynia.

"GAY

PETRONIUS"

65

That much tried minister was by now at his wits’ end. What Petronius had, foreseen had now come to pass: the Council of Regency was hopelessly split, Seneca and Burrus on the one side, Agrippina and her coterie on the other. Nero, it is true, was becoming more and more estranged from his mother, but was revealing at the same time an annoying but entirely natural taste for low life. He determined, like Boswell, "to be a blackguard and to see all that was to be seen." He and his boon companions would sally out at night, beat up the watch, toss passers-by in blankets, and exhibit all the more unpleasant traits of "ardent youth." "? At first Seneca had encouraged this particular activity, for it was very much better that the Emperor should occupy his time painting the town red than interfering in the administration,

but now

the matter was

becoming serious. It is true that he was

disguised when on these forays into the slums, but, like Boswell, “Πα

was always taken for a gentleman.” The opposition was formidable and was by now becoming desperate: these nocturnal affairs might be so contrived as to result in the "accidental and most deplorable’ death of Nero himself. And the death of Nero would restore Agrippina,

by virtue of her undoubted Julian descent, to the control of the State. Seneca could not run the risk of alienating the Emperor by opposing his pleasures; the most he could do was to hint his anxieties and fears, but, up to the present, this had not produced any noticeable improvement. Petronius was just the man to divert Nero’s amusements into safer channels. His reception at Court took place with the full approval and support of Seneca and Burrus. Petronius was highly diverted. He now had all the cards in his hands. It would be quite unnecessary for him to side with either party: they were certainly going to destroy one another. He would do just what Seneca wanted and become the young Emperor’s friend and mentor. He skilfully adopted the μὲ edmirari attitude that always fascinates the young." He deprecated their excesses, not on moral or prudential grounds, but because he considered them vulgar, and, what was much worse, boring and tame. He made their hair stand on end with stories of what he had done when he was their age, in the days of Messalina. At dinner, should someone retail with bated breath a horrible tale of nameless orgies practised by some notorious profligate, a languid voice would be heard to exclaim: "What could you expect?

I always said the fellow had no imagination!”; or, at the story of some fantastic extravagance, "Not a bad chap: pity he's so terribly stingy!” TSuet., Nero 26. 75Plutarch, de Adul. et Amico 19 (Moralia 60e).

66

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

He taught them that smut is not a necessary ingredient of a dirty story, and that it is more amusing to observe low life than to take part in it. He encouraged Nero in his literary and artistic tastes which absorbed more and more of his time, and in the building of the domus transitoria. In the charming decoration of the nymphaeum and of the few rooms that have been preserved we may perhaps see a specimen of his taste.74 It was natural that Petronius should be put in charge of the first Neroneia; indeed it is quite probable that he originated the idea.

He had succeeded in weaning Nero and his friends from the more objectionable

activities of adolescents,

and

had

instilled in them

a

real interest in literature and the fine arts. The Court was becoming more and more a literary salon, slightly reminiscent of Batheaston, the members of which vied with one another in producing £outs rimés and short epic poems. It was a pity that Seneca's nephew had managed to insinuate himself into the circle—was there never to be an end of Annaei who dabbled in letters? He was certainly talented, but tainted with all the family rhetoric Petronius so greatly disapproved of. A certamen quinquennale would provide a field day for the intellectual proletariat of the Empire. And, for a connoisseur of human nature such as Petronius, it would be extremely amusing. Seneca contributed an Apokolokyntosis in the very worst possible taste. It was funny to see this grave Stoic philosopher, and elder,if by now somewhat flyblown, statesman, engaged in libelling a dead man whom he had deified, inventing scandal about the unfortunate Agrippina, and justifying matricide. The pamphlet on the death of Claudius had been immature, but in better taste. How annoyed Petronius would have been had he known that, through the vagaries of time, his own lampoon would be attributed to Seneca!

His contribution to the festivities was the Satiricon. For years the people who so greatly enjoyed his after-dinner stories had been urging him to publish, and, given the stuff that was coming from the booksellers, why should he periturae parcere chartae? This is not the place to analyse this great work, except in so far as it may help us understand the author's character. His principal aim is obviously to amuse

the highly sophisticated society of which he himself is the greatest ornament by a witty description of "low life," of life on the other side "This building, discovered by Boni over forty years ago, is still lacking an adequate publication. The best account is in G. Lugli, Roma Antica, il centro monumen-

tale (Rome

1946) 506-508; the frescoes are reproduced in G. E. Rizzo, La Piuura

ellenistico-romana (Milan 1929) PI. 32.

"GAY

PETRONIUS"

67

of the tracks. I think we can definitely exclude any satirical or moral intention. Life is amusing and entertaining, and it takes all kinds of people to mdke a world. Yet human nature is the same the world over;

the people who live on the other side of the tracks are not, on the whole, very different from those who live on this side. "What fools these mortals be!" Common people, vulgarians, freedmen, adventurers, Grub Street poetasters, are discussing the same matters that interest the highest and most intellectual society. They too are writing poems on the Capture of Troy and on the Civil War; they too discuss astrology and tell ghost stories; they too produce bouts rimés and a philosophy ez goüt des gems du monde. Petronius is not attacking anyone in particular, but, of course, whom the cap fits, let him put it on. What he does attack is the cliché, be it in the mouth of a freedman

or of a professor of rhetoric. He ridicules with perfect impartiality the regular educational system and the regular attacks on this system. Words, words, words! We have had this educational system since Hellenistic times, and ever since Hellenistic times the same arguments have been advanced against it. Yet no one has done anything about it. Why? Because no one really wishes to change it; because far too many interests are involved to change it. The Sariricom is an indictment against a whole society, not against any particular class or section of that society. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves." The fault lies in Hermeros, Habinnas, Seneca, Nero

himself, in the crass materialism of the time. What can one expect of mankind, which demands a society ui sola pecunia regnat? The Safiricon was far too good not to be appreciated, the same time its readers were far too sophisticated not

a certain uneasiness.

The

but at to feel

pure delight of the first reading would,

with every subsequent perusal, give place to perplexity and gradually to dismay. What was the fellow really driving at? It was

easy enough

to identify references to such quite impossible people

as Calvisius Sabinus, or even to that setting star Seneca, but in certain other passages could he possibly be hinting at... ? At every re-reading some eyebrow would be raised higher, and more and more

people would look at one another with secret embarrassment.

And

yet there was nothing anyone could possibly take exception to. The

art of Petronius had advanced since his early lampoon on the death of Claudius. The most salacious situations were described purely, almost chastely: the vulgarians at the dinner party use the most extraordinary periphrases to describe the commonest physiological %Momigliano, 100.

68

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

functions. It is, verbally at least, a good deal purer than most classical literature and, given the normal vocabulary of schoolboys, there is no reason why they should not be allowed, indeed encouraged, to read it.'* As for politics and personalities, no one was likely to be such a

fool as to put on the cap. Hoc est se ipsum traducere. The defence of Petronius would be “‘any allusion to real persons is entirely fortuitous and unintentional,” and might very possibly be quite true. The wisest thing to do was to do nothing. Petronius had been promised a consulship, and he will have insisted on the promise being fulfilled, not because he was any longer interested in politics or had any ambition—the Satiricon shows clearly enough that life for its author is something to be observed rather than enjoyed —but because it was the right thing to have done, the artistic finish to an artistic life. It was a last gesture to show that this man about town could make something of what was by now a purely decorative office. Seneca had for years been talking tearfully about how slaves were really our brothers under the skin, and in all the years he had been minister what had he done for them? These philosophers could do nothing but talk; Petronius, taking immediate advantage of a sudden revulsion of public opinion over a particular case, introduced and carried the first legislation to restrict the powers of slave owners. Nunc dimittis. Events had proved him right. Agrippina and Seneca had destroyed each other, but his own period of power was over, and he knew it. It was not so much that his position was threatened by the rise of new favourites, such as Tigellinus; it was rather that he.was losing his influence naturally and inevitably through the attrition of time and habit. He had obtained it through the fascination that an experienced man of the world has for a young and callow adolescent. The man of the world was now advancing in years; the callow adolescent was an experienced man of the world himself. What was really annoying, If headmasters of Winchester did did. Of the three copies that belonged Conn., one, the Amsterdam 18mo of 1730"; he was then thirteen years old

not read Petronius (infra 83, n. 1), schoolboys to Horace Walpole and are now at Farmington, 1700, bears on its fly-leaf the inscription “H.W. and at Eton (the kindness and generosity with

which Mr. W. S. Lewis places his incomparable treasures at the disposal of students of all kinds is so well known as to render acknowledgements almost superfluous). The plan followed by W. B. Sedgwick in rendering the Cena suitable reading for schools is strange. He expunges all the curious euphemisms for "washing one's

hands," but retains the smutty /aecasin dico of 42. 2, and the disgusting riddles of 58. 8-9. The latter puzzle him: they would not puzzle the average schoolboy for an instant.

"GAY

PETRONIUS"

69

however, was that, despite his strenuous efforts, there was no stemming the flood of bad taste. The great fire was a wonderful opportunity but Petronius saw that in the reconstruction of Rome and in the building of the new palace his advice would be neither sought nor followed; Nero was now entirely governed by those vulgarians, Severus, Celer, and Fabullus. The last scene has been described by Tacitus, in one of the finest of the great set pieces of the 4nna/s. The letter from Nero must not have come unexpected, nor could Petronius greatly regret leaving the world

of A.D. 66. He could at least show them what he had shown them in his governments, that the playboy had something in him. He would show neither the pusillanimity of his young enemy Lucan, nor the invincible rhetoric of his old enemy Seneca. He would break the favourite goblet, coveted by the Emperor, and die, as he had lived— elegantly. ... honeste vixit, honeste obtit—quid habet quod queratur?

EXCURSUSES

EXCURSUS

ON

THE

most

extremely

"VULGAR"

recent investigation

valuable

I

LATIN

of the language

thesis of H.

L. W.

Nelson,

of Petronius

is the

Petromius

en zijn

"vulgair" latijn: Een stilistisch-grammatische studie over de zoogenaamde "oulgaire dictie’

in de Cena

Trimalchionis,

Deel

I (dissert.,

Utrecht

1947). He quite rightly points out the unfortunate nature of the term “vulgar Latin” which “often seems to cover both vulgar slang and colloquial speech” (200). Leaving aside the extremely complicated question of slang—fashionable, occupational, or vulgar—jargon, cant,

and dialectical or regional usages, the colloquial speech of any period is not a unity. Broadly speaking, there is a "polite" usage, and an "impolite" or "vulgar" usage. The distinction between the two is much more a matter of upbringing, and of social and family environ. ment, than of formal education. Colloquial speech is not learnt through formal education. If all the persons who habitually say and frequently write "I would like," were to be called uneducated, the result would be embarrassing in the extreme. On the other hand a practically illiterate Cockney will employ the correct usage idiomatically, as Macaulay long ago pointed out. An Italian conversation book published in the United States lists /a ma Signora as the colloquial way of referring to one’s wife. A witty lady of my acquaintance in discussing a Fascist gerarca, a man with a slew of degrees, who had been catapul-

ted into the diplomatic service, described him as “the kind of person who talks of his wife as /a mia Signora." Enough said! We know little enough about colloquial Latin, we know nothing at

all about elegant and inelegant colloquial Latin. Any distinction between the speech of the "learned" and “unlearned” characters in the Cena is entirely beside the point. Petronius and the society for which he is writing will have considered all the characters, Encolpius and Agamemnon included, as appallingly vulgar. At the most we might

be able to distinguish between a pedantic or literate vulgarity and an illiterate or vulgar Ludus should be impossible for us The moment a

vulgarity. On the other hand the "polite" colloquial, but to appreciate this particular colloquial language is written, 73

the language of the it is difficult if not shade of difference. unless it is written

74

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

by a professional philologist or by someone interested in such matters, it ceases to be colloquial. The Scots dialect of Burns is a literary creation. Works such as the Peregrinatio Aetheriae must be used with this caution in mind. Did the author actually talk that way, or did she, or he, think that the writing was, to some extent at least, literary and elegant? The work may reflect the colloquial speech not of its own day but of a much earlier period. Nelson's statement, 198, “the transition

neuter plural in -4 > fem. sing. begins only about the time of the Peregrinatio," should be modified to read "the transition . . . appears in written Latin only about that time": we have no way of telling when it began in colloquial speech. Lófstedt, Syntactica 2. 365, has pointed out that "poetic" deviations from standard literary usage are not archaisms but represent the spoken language. The same might be said of legal Latinity. Coram as a preposition is found in the Lex Acilia repetundarum of 122 B.c., ll. 20 and

40. The accusativus pretii is so common

in post-classical Latin that

Marmorale, Cena 52, finding in Sat. 43. 4, quantum for quanti, noted: "forma popolare del tardo latino, assai posteriore al tempo che si attribuisce di solito a Petronio." But Niedermann (Mnemosyne 11 [1943] 122), has recognized it in the Tabula Heracleensis, |. 48. Schulz, Classical Roman Law 311, discussing Florentinus in D 30. 116, says: "the word delibatio (=deminutio, taking away from, diminishing) occurs in the whole of Latin literature (leaving aside ecclesiastical literature) only in this passage. This is final: no classical lawyer can

possibly have used so singular a word." I beg to differ: if legal Latin, like ecclesiastical Latin, reflects colloquial speech much more closely than literary Latin, the employment by Florentinus of such a word is

perfectly possible. Nelson,

199, considers fruniscor

and

sanguen

not vulgarisms

but

archaisms “‘mutually exclusive," and states that "only in exceptional cases can archaisms also occur in living speech; i.e., as part of a fixed idiomatic phrase." This is perfectly true of deliberate literary archaism, as practised by Spenser or Lamb, but is not true of ordinary

speech; indeed the fashionable colloquialisms of one age become the vulgarisms of another. "You was" is now a true vulgarism; it is constantly used in the eighteenth century by persons of both fashion and education (cf. Lord Herbert, Henry, Elizabeth and George, passim). In modern English, as opposed to American, usage, for a woman to ," is address her husband or speak of him to others as “Mr. colloquial and extremely vulgar. It is also archaic (cf. Chapman's Appendix to his edition of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice 409).

EXCURSUS

I

75

Much of standard American usage is archaic from the point of view of modern English usage, as may be seen from the frequency with which one finds in the OED "now vulgar or U.S.” We are beginning to see as through a fog the dim outlines of collo. quial Latin; we are still very far from being able to detect its nuances

and farther still from the possibility of dating its usages.

EXCURSUS

ON

ROMAN

II

PROPAGANDA

LITERATURE

Ir seems clear that from the accession of Nerva to that of Commodus the Roman Emperors treated libellers and pamphleteers with the

galling contempt with which Dundas People

of Scotland.

Of course

there

treated Boswell's Letter to the were

limits,

and

sometimes

an

official might be over-zealous, but on the whole their attitude was that of Frederick the Great’s

" My people can say what they please as

long as I do what

(cf. Lucian, de morte Peregrini

I please"

18). The

result is, of course, that there is little trace of such pamphlet literature

during this period. It is also clear that in the preceding two centuries there had been an enormous output of pamphlets and that a consider-

able proportion of them

had been preserved

and was

available to

Tacitus and Suetonius. The importance of this literature for the modern historian cannot be overemphasized, since, through Tacitus and

Suetonius, it has produced the still current view of the Roman Empire that modern scholarship is only now beginning to correct. But what was its importance at the time? Did it in any way affect the course of events? Was Cicero's position shaken by Sallust's pamphlet, or would it have been strengthened by a puff from Lucceius? Was Cicero's Cato of such importance that Caesar, who had certainly plenty of other things to worry about, had to find the time to answer it? Judged by the parallel of the English seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, even though the English government at that time had a

more popular character that it had very little Basilike did not affect only apparent result of

than that of Rome, the conclusion would be importance. The publication of the Eikon Cromwell's power in the slightest, and the Milton's pamphlets is the regret of posterity.

Walpole's fall was due far more to the treachery of Newcastle than to

The Beggar's Opera and to the virtual monopoly of journalistic talent enjoyed by the Opposition, while the Duke of Grafton had plenty of reasons,

besides the Letters of Junius,

for deciding

to resign. On

the

other hand the retirement of Bute was probably due very largely to

the North

Briton—though

the political importance

of Wilkes

was

created by the idiocy of the Government, not by the ability of No. 45 —and

the

cancellation

of Wood’s

patent 76

was

certainly

due

to

The

EXCURSUS

II

77

Drapier’s Letters. These would seem to be the only two major events that can be directly attributed to the pamphleteers. As for Roman History, it is certain that Octavian created a formidable propaganda machine against Antony and directed it with extraordinary skill and success, both in uniting his own supporters and in winning over Antony’s. The constant sniping by Agrippina and her followers may also have been the chief factor that decided Tiberius to leave Rome. Ín these two cases the importance of the propaganda literature seems certain, but we have not at present sufficient data for the other instances, or to say to what extent it contributed to the various conspiracies against the Emperors. Only in the case of the murder of Caligula does it seem possible to exclude the influence

of propaganda. The whole subject deserves more careful investigation.

EXCURSUS

III

THE SENATE OF THE GODS Tue description of the meeting of the Senate of the Gods given in Chapters 9-11 is obviously a skit on the meetings of the terrestrial Senate (Russo, 86) and is one of the best things in the pamphlet. It gives us a glimpse of the Julio-Claudian Senate at work: the first aimless discussions, the call to order by the presiding magistrate, the windy speeches of the magistrates designate who must be called on first, while the lobbyist is running around full of self-importance, whispering to his friends and supporters. The satirical intention is clear and can be compared to the ironical reference of Eumolpus (Sat. 88. 9) ipse senatus recti bonique praeceptor. The speech of Augustus expresses clearly the writer's own views, and we can therefore conclude

that

for the

writer

Augustus

represented

the

ideal princeps,

the

model for Nero. If Augustus 15 the writer's mouthpiece and ideal, the writer has no objection in principle to an Apotheosis as such, but only to Apotheoses of unworthy persons as tending to bring religion itself into contempt, dum tales deos facitis, nemo vos deos esse credet (11. 4). And since 1t is the proposal of Augustus that is eventually passed, all other motions are disapproved of, the motion of Janus against any further Apotheoses

equally with that of Diespiter to admit Claudius. Moreover, since the satire is directed against the Senate as a whole, Janus, Diespiter, and Hercules should represent certain groups in the Senate, perhaps, indeed, certain persons well known to the readers. Janus is designatus in kal. Iulias postmeridianus consul, a Mr.

Facing-both-ways, so eloquent, from his practice in the forum, that the stenographers

cannot

take his speech

down,

and

fond of using

Greek expressions. I suggest that the writer is here satirizing the old republican die-hards, foes on principle to any innovation or reform and desirous of a return to the old Roman ways. The proposed decree is directed not merely against Apotheoses of human persons but against the granting of divine honours to anything that was once alive, and would therefore include all the Eastern theriomorphic cults (cf. Sat. 17. 5: nostra regio tam praesentibus plena est numinibus, ut facilius possis deum quam hominem invenire). We might even go 78

EXCURSUS

III

:

79

further and suggest that the satire is directed against the leader of the group, Thrasea Paetus, whose great reputation was largely based

on his rhetorical skill as an advocate and who was suffect consul in A.D. 56. Singe at the death of Claudius no consuls had been designated for the following years (Suet., C/aud. 46), it is reasonable to suppose that one of the first acts of the new Government was to present a slate for the next couple of years, and that the names on this slate

were distasteful to the writer. Diespiter,

who

proposes

the

admission

of Claudius,

also

consul

designate, nummularialus, who quaestu se sustinebat: vendere civitatulas

folebat, must represent those Senators who depended entirely on the charity of the Emperor and, like the “‘Barnabotti” in the decline of Venice, on the petty patronage which they enjoyed as Senators.

They, of course, could be counted on to do the behests of the Court and were amenable to any suggestion one of its emissaries whispered in their ear. Hercules, the lobbyist for Claudius, who had travelled extensively and had performed so many great actions, should represent those friends and supporters of the Emperor who were his emissaries and to whom were given the great offices of State and the important governments. When in Rome they were probably the "managers" of

the Senate. In the case both of Diespiter and of Hercules the satire has probably

a personal

application,

but

the identifications

of the

former with Seneca and of the latter with Burrus are so obvious as to be probably wrong. A writer who thus satirizes with equal venom and impartiality the old conservatives, the impoverished nobility, and the new officialdom, that is to say the three groups that made up the whole of the Senate,

can hardly be called an enthusiastic spokesman for the "feelings and privileges of that modi/itas, which considered

the Roman traditions"! 1M. A. Levi, Nerone e i suoi tempi (Milan

1949) 51.

itself the sole trustee of

EXCURSUS

THE LANGUAGE

IV

OF THE LUDUS

AND OF THE

SATIRICON

PaRALLELs between the language of the Ludus and that of the Satiricon have been given by Collignon, 309-10, and Maiuri, Cena 239-340; the following list, though not claiming in any way to be exhaustive, is more complete. It would be dangerous, however, to treat it as a probatio probans; many of the following usages can be found in Seneca, Persius, or even Phaedrus and Cicero, and obviously

derive from colloquial speech. l. Lud.

1. 1:

me

liberum

factum—

Sar.

117.

12:

nec

minus

liber

woe

Lud. Lud. Lud.

Lud. Lud. Lud.

. Lud.

H

bh

sum quam vos. 1: suum

. 1:

diem

obiit—Sas.

61. 9: supremum

bucca— Sar. 43. 3; 44. 2; 64. 12; 70. 3: bucca.

. 2: velit nolit—Saz, 71. 11: velit nolit. . 3: verbis conceptis affrmavit—Sat, iurat verbis conceptissimis.

. 3: salvum habeatis.

et

felicem.

habeam—Sat.

. Lud.

113.

13;

133.

2:

69. 3: me salvum

2. 1. 3: suum victrix augebat Cynthia regnum— δα, 122, line 130: plenos extinxit Cynthia vultus.

2:

patere

mathematicos

aliquando verum

126. 3: nec mathematicorum Lud.

diem obiit.

. 2: horam eius nemo pares. . 2: nemo...

caelum curare soleo.

novit—Sas.

illum natum

dicere—Sat.

fr. 32. 6: facit

putavit—Sas.

58.

hora

10: qui te

natum non putat. . Lud.

3: pusillum temporis— Sa. 34. 4: pusillis utribus.

. . . .

4: capsulam—Sat. 67. 9: capsellam.

Lud. Lud. Lud. Lud.

Lud. . Lud.

29.

8:

pyxis

non

pusilla;

4: Babae— $a:. 37. 9: babae, babae. 2: plena manu— Sai. 43. 4, and 64. 12: manu plena. 2: animam ebulliit—Sa;. 42. 3: animam ebulliit; 62. 10: animam ebullivi.

. 3: omnia concacavit— $a. 66. 7: catillum concacatum. . 4: philologos homines—Sat. 39, 4; philologiam nosse. 80

EXCURSUS

IV

81

18.

Lud.

6. 1: Herculi vafer.

19.

Lud.

6. 1: Febris... cum illo venerat—Saz. 56. 2: quando febris

minime

vafro—S$a;.

50.

5: Hannibal

homo

veniat. 20. 21. 22.

Lud. Lud. Lud.

23. Lud. 24. Lud.

6. 1: ego tibi dico—3Sa:. 64. 2: tibi dico. 6. 1: tot annis vixi—3S$a/. 57. 9: annis quadraginta servivi.

6. 2: decollare

homines

solebat—Saz.

51.

6: iussit illum

Caesar decollari. 7. 1: alogias excutiam—$z;. 58. 7: alogias nenias (77). 7. 1: et quo terribilior esset, tragicus fit—Sat. 132. 13; et quidam tragici oculos suos tanquam audientes castigant.

25. Lud.

7. 3: oblitus nugarum.

26.

7. 4: qui a me notorem petisset—Saz, 92. 11: nisi notorem dedissem. 8. 2: nec cor nec caput habet— $a. 59. 2: cor non habebas; 63. 8: non cor habebat, non intestina. 9. 1: vos mera mapalia fecistis—Sa/. 58. 14: aut numera mapalia (77). 9. 3: olim magna res erat deum fieri—Sat. 17. 5: facilius possis deum quam hominem invenire. 9. 3: fabam mimum fecistis— Sar. 35. 6: de laserpiciario mimo. ἢ 9. 6: modo huc, modo illuc— $a;. 45. 2: modo sic, modo sic. 9. 6: manus manum lavat—Saz. 45. 13: manus manum lavat. 11. 3: corpus dis iratis natum—— $21. 134. 2: mihi deos iratos

Lud.

27. Lud. 28. Lud. 29. Lud. 30. Lud. 31.

Lud.

32. Lud. 33. Lud.

nugarum—-$ar.

71.

4,

and

136.

5: oblitus

excitasti. 34. Lud. 35. Lud. 36.

Lud.

37.

Lud.

38. Lud.

11. 3: ad summam— Sat. passim. 11. 4: honeste gessi— $2. 43. 1: honeste vixit, honeste obiit. 12. 2: non semper Saturnalia erunt—Sat, 44. 3: semper Saturnalia agunt. 12. 3. 1: edite planctus—Sa¢. 81. 2: aegrum planctibus pectus; 136. 6. 5: perterritus aether planctibus insolitis. 13. 3: quamvis podagricus esset— $47. 64. 3: podagricus factus sum; 132. 14: podagrici pedibus suis male dicunt;

140. 6: podagricum se esse . . . dixerat. 39. Lud.

13. 3: momento temporis pervenit—Sz/. 28. 1: momento temporis . . . eximus; 97. 5: momentoque temporis inseruit; 116. 1: momento temporis in montem conscendimus.

82

ARBITER

40. Lud.

13. 3: subalbam

illum

puto

OF

canem

domo

ELEGANCE

in deliciis habere—3$a/.

canem

reliquisse;

64.

43. 8: non

6:

catellam

nigram. To these might be added Lud.

l3. 2: antecesserat iam Aegyptiorum audacia invenit,

compendiaria tam magnae

Narcissus—Sat. 2. 9: artis compendiariam

We cannot, however, be quite certain that Petronius in the latter passage is using the word in its usual meaning of "a short cut." If the whole tirade of Encolpius is derived from a Greek original, it is possible that compendiaria may be the translation of a technical term of Greek

art criticism; cf. Silvio Ferri, Antiche (Rome 1946) 182.

Plinio

i] Vecchio:

Storia

delle Arti

EXCURSUS

POPE

AND

V

PETRONIUS

Pore was severely taken to task for including Petronius among the literary critics of antiquity. The note appended to the couplet in the Elwin-Courthope edition (The Works of Alexander Pope [London 1871] 2. 76) is worth reproducing. This dissolute and effeminate writer little deserved a place among the good critics for only two or three pages on the subject of criticism— WARTON.! It is to be suspected

that Pope had never read Petronius, and mentioned him on

the credit of two or three sentences which he had often seen quoted, imagining that where there was so much, there must necessarily be more. Young men, in haste to be renowned, too frequently talk of books they have scarcely seen—Jounson,? If Pope had been acquainted with the general tenor of the fragments which remain of Petronius, he would not have celebrated the most corrupt and disgusting writer of antiquity for an unalloyed combination of charming qualities.

We can ignore the comment of the notorious headmaster of Winchester, as well as the unsigned editorial annotation which must derive from Croker—even the Reverend Whitwell Elwin could hardly have

achieved unaided so majestic a specimen of imbecile smugness—but Johnson's accusation that Pope knew only some second-hand quotations from Petronius, an accusation repeated by George Paston, Mr. Pope (London 1909) 1. 46, must be examined. The formative

influences that worked on the adolescent Pope have been studied by E. Audra,

L’influence frangaise

dans l'euvre de Pope

(Paris

1931),

1Note in Joseph Warton's edition of The Works of Alexander Pope (London 1797) 1. 255. The remainder of the note confirms, if any confirmation were necessary, L. F.

Powell’s conjecture that Warton was Johnson's "literary friend" who was “a very pompous

puzzling

fellow"

(Boswell,

Life 4. 236).

Warton's

note

continues:

“His

fragment on the Civil War is far below Lucan, whom he endeavoured to blame and to excel. Sir George Wheeler, esteemed as an accurate traveller, informs us, that he saw at Trau, in the hands of a Doctor Statelius, a fragment of Petronius, in which the account of the Supper of Trimalchion was entire, Yet this fragment has been judged to be spurious." Such ignorance in 1797 seems almost incredible, even in an eighteenth-century schoolmaster. If Warton ever read Petronius, which seems doubtful, he cannot have read him in any edition later than 1669 and he evidently confounds the controversy about the Codex Traguriensis with the controversy about the forgeries of Nodot! This is confirmed by the remarks in the Essay, where the statement "his own style is more affected than even of his contemporaries, when the

Augustan simplicity was laid aside" is merely an echo of Rapin. 2In his review of Warton's Essay.

83

84

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

while the position of Petronius in the France of that period has also been investigated by A. Collignon, Pétrone en France (Paris 1905). The publication in 1664 of the Trad manuscript gave an enormous impetus to Petronian studies in France. From 1668 to 1693 twelve editions of the Satiricon were published, and one of these was probably the one read by Swift in 1697/8. In 1693 this interest in Petronius,

which

by that time might have begun

to flag, was revived by the

forgeries of Nodot, so that during all the first decades of the eighteenth century Petronius occupied a conspicuous place in the French literature that so profoundly influenced the author of the Essay on Criticism. Curiously enough, Petronius seems to have been read chiefly in the original Latin; several persons attempted or completed translations of the work, but only two had been printed before 1693. In 1654 the Abbé de Marolles published a prose translation of the de Bello Civili, in 1667 he turned it into verse, adding the Troiae Halosis and the other verse fragments, and in 1677 he translated the Trad fragment. An anonymous translation of the whole Satiricon was published at Cologne in 1687 and reissued at Antwerp in 1689. In 1693 Nodot

published a translation of the whole, including his own forgeries, and this remained the standard translation for the next three decades. In England it formed the basis for the translation of the Satiricon by "Wilson of the Middle Temple" and others, issued in 1708. By and

large, the circulation of the Latin text would greater than that of the translations. !

appear to have been

During the second half of the seventeenth century three French "wits" were great admirers of the Saríricon. Gui Patin frequently cited him and gave the Matron of Ephesus to a schoolboy, prudently warning him not to tell the story when ladies were present ne a/iqua ex ilis, animal natura sua superbum, serio indignetur. There is no evidence that Pope was acquainted with Patin's works. The greatest admirer and imitator of Petronius was Bussy-Rabutin. Though Pope knew his Héloisse only through the translation by Hughes of a rifacimento of the original published in Holland, it is hardly credible that a

young man of his age, interested in French literature and, through the influence of Wycherley, in French literary society, would not have read the Histoire amoureuse des Gaules. What Bussy admires and

attempts to imitate is "the courtier's ease" with which Petronius skates over the thin 1ce of pornography—as de Grammont put it "toi qui... fais revivre Pétrone"—but he nowhere discusses Petronius' literary theories. Pope was certainly acquainted with some of the works of the third Petronian, Saint-Évremond, and possibly with the

Fugement sur Sénàque,

Plutarque

et Pétrone published

in 1670, the

EXCURSUS

V

85

only work, as far as I know, that might have suggested to Pope that Petronius was anything more than an elegant pornographer. He can scarcely have known the paraphrase of the opening chapters of the Satiricon attributed to Saint-Evremond in 1726. Finally, he may have been influenced by the scattered allusions to Petronius in Dryden? who was himself influenced by Goulu's Lettres de Phyllarque à Ariste, containing selections from Tacitus’ Dia/ogus and from the

Satiricon. It is consequently difficult to imagine where, before 1711, Pope would have “often seen quoted” critical judgements from the Satiricon. Of all the influences that went to the formation of the Essay on

Criticism by far the strongest are those of Rapin and Boileau. The former, in the preface to the Réffexions sur la poétique d’ Aristote, which Pope is known to have studied carefully, attacked the style of Petronius as affected and without the "ease" which the writer recommended to others: though in the Réffexions sur l'éloguence, which may or may not have been known to Pope, he called Petronius "ce critique de si bon sens." He is the only author who might have suggested to

Pope that Petronius was an important critic, but he would hardly have suggested “‘the courtier's ease." Boileau is definitely hostile to Petronius and especially to his exaltation by Saint-Évremond.

Except for the few references in Dryden and Rapin, Pope can hardly have known of Petronius as a critic from quotations. Wycherley will have recommended the Satirieon to him, and he read it in the

Latin. “Curious not knowing" in line 286 of the Essay is taken from Sat. 46. 6, non quidem doctus sed curiosus, and Pope wrote out the whole passage in the margin of his manuscript. This would appear

conclusive. The estimate of Petronius as a critic is due to Pope's own intuition, an detractors.

intuition

far

beyond

the

adamantine

dullness

of his

*Dryden undoubtedly knew Petronius well. He paraphrases Saf. 115. 17 in dnnus Mirabilis 35 and quotes Sat. 130. 2. in the Prologue to Aurengzebe. In the Essay of Dramatick Poesie he mentions Petronius with Horace, Lucan, Seneca, and Juvenal as writers from whom Ben Jonson had drawn, but did not give him any special

prominence as a critic, though in this very essay he quotes Sat. 2. 2: primi omnium eloquentiam perdidistis. The only passage that might have given Pope a hintisin the Preface to The Conquest of Granada (1672): here Dryden describes Petronius as “the most elegant, and one of the most judicious authors of the Latin tongue, who... had given many admirable rules for the structure and beauties of an epic poem...” and concludes by quoting $a. 118.6. A sentence from this passage of Petronius was used by Steele for a heading to No. 392 of The Spectator, May 30, 1712, that is to say well after the great success of Pope's Essay.

EXCURSUS

PONTIA

THE

VI

POISONER

Τύνεναι in Satire 6. 638-642 writes: sed clamat Pontia "feci, confiteor, puerisque meis aconita paravi, quae deprensa patent; facinus tamen ipsa peregi." tune duos, saevissima vipera, cena?

tune duos? "septem, si septem forte fuissent!" He is evidently referring to a famous cause célébre, an affaire Brinvilliers, well known to his readers. A lady by the name of Pontia, evidently a member of “High” or at least "Fast" Society, gave a large dose of belladonna to her two small sons (puerz), with the usual results, both to them and to herself. It is also clear that the most sensational thing about the whole business was not the crime in itself, but the cynical attitude of the defendant at the trial, rather like that of the Marquise. The scholiast adds some further information: Pontia, P. Petronii filia, quem Nero convictum in crimine coniurationis damnavit; defuncto marito [Valla gives his name as Drymio, which seems improbable] ji/ios suos veneno necasse convicta, cum largis se epulis onerasset et vino, venis incisis saltans, quo maxime

studio oblec-

tabatur, extincta est. Short as it is, this whole passage presents an extraordinary number of difficulties. The natural meaning of damnare

in such a context is "to condemn to death,” and therefore the possibility of her father's being the otherwise completely unknown Petronius Priscus, probably an equestrian, who was exiled by Nero after the Pisonian

conspiracy

(Tacitus, 7/zz.., 15. 71.

10), should

be excluded.

There is no doubt whatever that the only Petronius put to death by Nero on a charge of conspiracy was the Arbiter; on the other hand his praenomen, as we have seen, was probably Caius, possibly Titus, but certainly not Publius; the only Publius we know of in the Neronian age is the second Turpilianus. Prima facie, there would seem to be two explanations possible: that she was the daughter of the Arbiter and the scholiast got him mixed up with his cousin, or that she was the daughter of Turpilianus II, whom the scholiast confounded with 86

EXCURSUS

the better-known Arbiter, the rather more probable than the Unfortunately the matter is century of the Empire the rule

VI

87

former of these two hypotheses being latter. not as simple as that. During the first is that a daughter's name is a patrony-

mic, not a matronymic, the latter practice developing only during the second and third centuries. The name Pontia would indicate that

her father's nomen was Pontius, and therefore Borghesi, followed by most prosopographers, gave her as daughter to C. Petronius Pontius Nigrinus, consul in a.p. 37. Against this theory it would be sufficient to observe that his praenomen was certainly Caius, not Publius, and he was equally certainly not put to death on a charge of conspiracy by Nero; indeed he was probably dead by a.p. 64. One blunder of the scholiast's is explicable, two are not. Consideration of chronology would seem also to exclude the possibility that Pontius Nigrinus was the father of L'Empoisonneuse Assuming that the average age of an ordinary or suffect consul was + forty years, Nigrinus, consul in A.p. 37, will have been born ca, a+ 3 B.c.; T. Petronius Niger, almost certainly his son, was consul between 60 and 70, and will therefore have been born between 20 and

30. Since he bears the name Petronius and not Pontius he will have been born after his father had been adopted into the gens Petronia. On the

other hand a daughter Pontia wil have been born Pefore such an adoption. She must therefore be older than T. Petronius Niger and will have been born ca. a.p. 20. Now Juvenal's satire was certainly written after A.D. 115, and the crime to which he refers and with the details of which he assumes his readers to be quite familiar must have taken place comparatively recently, probably during the last years of

Domitian or even later. The narrative of Tacitus is continuous from 47 to 66 and, had such a crime taken place during this period, we can be quite certain that Tacitus, who is always delighted at a chance to expose “Vice in High Society," would have descanted on it at length.

Moreover, a cause célébre takes place every decade, sometimes every year; nothing is talked

about more

at the time, nor forgotten more

quickly. Who today remembers Harry Thaw or Mrs, Thompson? Juvenal almost lets us see Pontia in court, and assumes that the whole dialogue will evoke an immediate response. In the absence of the yellow press, the memory of the Roman public may have been more retentive than our own, but it is difficult to suppose that Juvenal would refer in such terms to an event that took place before a.p. 90 at the very earliest. By that date a Pontia, daughter of Pontius Nigrinus, would

88

ARBITER

OF

ELEGANCE

have been about seventy years of age and thus the possibility of her having two small children to poison would seem somewhat remote. It is, however, quite possible on chronological grounds that the Arbiter or Turpilianus II married a Pontia, daughter of Pontius Nigrinus, in about a.p. 50 and that their daughter, whose full name may well have been Petronia Pontia, and who was probably born cz. A.D. 60, was the person referred to by Juvenal and his scholiast.

INDEX

LOCORUM

Aelian

Frontinus

13

de Nat. An. 7. 48

Agennius Urbicus Apion

21 14 21

Appian

Gellius, Aulus

5. 14. 27 Historia Augusta Horace

B.C. 5. 15 Apuleius

52 12

20

10, 11 10 10

Caesar

BG

Juvenal 7. 50. 4-6

Anticato Calpurnius Ed.

52 27

Cicero

25 76

Ep. ad Att. 1. 4.3

59

Codex Iustinianus

6. 35 7. 6. 13

9. 9. 16. 2 9. 45 Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum 6. 1266

6. 37045 10. 858 14. 4459

19 20 17 17

54 50 17 51

Digesta Iustiniani

29. 5 116

40. 1. 24 42.

1. 38

48. 8.2 48. 8. 11 48.

50, 86

Livy

4. 117

30.

6. 638

16

Dio Cassius 60. 29. 7

60. 35

19 74 18 18 20 15 17 12 20

32, 34

Oxyr. Per. 1. 150 Lucan

Lucilius Ludus de morte Claudii ᾿ codices .1,2,3

51 7, 8, 26 9, 10

28, 29 80 80 42 80 42, 59, 80 80 80 80 81 81 59, 81 42, 58 38, 81 39 81 78, 79 43 81 81 78, 81 81 31

& on

e i

wo

b> me

UWA

ΕΝ

21 NM

Un CA UA Un 0s o aN

δι A

OOo

o

00

eI MO

o

to

—

ON

C2

r2

O0

—

co

D

Mo

122, 126. 130. 132. 132. 132. 133. 134. 136. 136. 140.

oh

o

Q2

CO

16,

ue

_l -

Ὁ

Ub

Oe o OA WNP We

81 80

bP

Oh

80, 74,

oo

A

MOR

M Or

—

—_

t3 b2

SS C3

WWW SM PPP oo RR BR & £e6 nt he PPh Un CA © 9 tWU

BWWOo

bh

78,

tA o

wn

B

61. 62. 63. 64. 64. 64. 64. 64. 66. 67. 69. 70. 70. 71. 71. 71. 77. 81. 88. 592. 97. 113. 115. 116. 117. 118.

ὦ

PPP Ne aS PAN M CO ὦ στ MD 00e Ne

Satiricon

OND

9, 74

Peregrinatio Actheriac Petronius

57, -

57 57. 57. 58. 58. 58. 59.

τ

82 82 43 58

t

81,

ELEGANCE

-— -

2 3 5 2

13. 13. 13. 14.

OF

-

ARBITER

12 6 line 130 3 2 13 {8 15 2 2 5 6. 5 6

Philo in Flaccum de Plantatione

INDEX

LOCORUM

Pliny

91 Nero

N. H. 6, 181 37. 20 Plutarch Crassus 30-31 de Adul, et Amico Polyaenus 7. 41

Procopius

50 48, 50

Suetonius Claudius 25.2 33 39 44.2 46 46.2

28.1

Fitellius 1.2 3

51 50, 65

6. 'Tacitus

51 38

Seneca Phil, Ep. ad Lucilium 27 ad Polybium Seneca Rh. Contr. 4,

praef. 10

26

dial. de orat. Agric. 16 Hist. 2. 64 Ann. 1. 73 3. 49

15

3. 55 11. 12 12. 8 12. 53

13. 1

30,

13. 3

20 61 39 36 78 36

13. 15 14. 42-45

15. 71 16.

17

16. 19 Terentianus Maurus

49,