A Dutch Adaption of the Satyricon

by Chr. Stöcker

Paul Claes, De Sater. Roman. Amsterdam (Uitgevereij De Bezige Bij) 1993

The fragmentary state of the Satyricon has often induced philologists to try to reconstruct the missing parts. This was first attempted by Nodot (Note 1: Christian Laes, “Forging Petronius: Francois Nodot and the Fake Petronian Fragments,” Humanistica Lovaniensia 47 (1998) – an article, that unfortunately I have not been able to get.)  unfortunately using falsifications – and was continued by many a learned translator like Heinse or philologist like van Thiel. Also Fellini’s adaptation of the Satyricon into the dream world of cinema is in a sense the logical continuation of this genuine interest in regaining or recreating a complete Satyricon.

The latest, but most probably not the last, specimen of this kind of Nachleben of Petronius might be the novel De Sater (= The Satyr), published in 1993 by Paul Claes, a successful Dutch writer (Note 2: Much of my contribution is indebted to H. Längin’s “Antike-Rezeption im Renaissance - Humanismus. Janus Dousa d.Ä. und die poetische Kuss-Epidemie (II),” Anregung 44 (1998) 399 ff.;). The author, born in 1943, has translated Catullus and James Joyce into Dutch. His modern Schelmenroman shows in many details his thorough understanding of the ancient novel. Claes here tries to reinvent ancient novels like the lost Milesiaka of Aristides of Miletus (Note 3: Längin, p. 400, points out that Claes uses even the only surviving Greek quotation from the Milesiaka.).

The novel De Sater starts with an adaptation of the novella of the Widow of Ephesus; Endymion, the main character, is made to be the issue of this liaison. In the further development of the novel nearly all parts of the Satyricon are used and skillfully enlarged, e.g. parodies, different episodes of seduction, of course the curse of Priapus, the Cena, various poems, even Petronius himself is introduced – in short, nearly every line shows the author’s profound knowledge of the Satyricon. But Claes also draws on other literary sources, e.g. on the stepmother novella from Apuleius2 and the Skamander novella from Aischines (ep. 10).

All in all, a brilliant (and highly prurient) modern remake of the Satyricon of Petronius. Claes – like Petronius – successfully entertains his readers, shows his knowledge of ancient literary genres and brilliantly parodies them.

A translation of this novel into English, French or German should be very much in demand and could be used for further studies on the narrative technique and the adaption of ancient sources in modern literature.

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John Lydus on Petronius

by Barry Baldwin

John Lydus on Petronius De Magistratibus 1.41, in the version of A.C. Bandy that accompanies his edition (Philadelphia 1983): "Rhinthon was the first to write comedy in hexameters. Lucilius the Roman took his start from him and became the first to write comedies in heroic verse. After him, and those who came after him, whom the Romans call satyrici, the later poets, because they had emulated the style of Cratinus and Eupolis and had used Rhinthon's meters and the caustic railleries of those mentioned above, strengthened the satiric comedy. Horace did not deviate from the art, but Persius in his desire to imitate the poet Sophron surpassed Lycophron's obscurity. Turnus, Juvenal, and Petronius, however, because they had capriciously made abusive attacks, marred the satiric norm."

This intriguing passage has been widely overlooked or neglected, even by those closest to it. Bandy himself spares it not one word in his commentary. Nor Michael Maas in his [cf. my review in Speculum 69 (1994) 528-30] John Lydus and the Roman Past (London 1992). Nor T.F. Carney's chapter “The Literary World of John Lydus” in Bureaucracy in Traditional Society (Lawrence 1971), a book largely about Lydus and subsuming a translation of the De Mag., albeit not much was perhaps to be expected from an author who repeatedly misrepresents the Hellenistic Lycophron as a 6th century Byzantine satirist, an unfortunate example of what used to happen in B(efore) C(amerons) days when mainstream classicists strayed into late antiquity – even John Sullivan mislocated the 4th century poet Palladas to the reign of Nero [Literature and Politics in the Age of Nero (Cornell 1985) 98, n.41]. The item is frequently missing from editorial registers of testimonia, e.g. in John Ferguson's Juvenal and Martin Smith's Cena. More recently, Edward Courtney [A Companion to Petronius (Oxford 2001) 19] dismisses it as "unimportant" – well, at least he noticed it.

Our extract follows upon a paragraph on the structure and content of Roman stage drama, comic and tragic, complete with predictable lament on its latter-day decline into “dumbed-down” mime for the masses; cf. N.-S. Tanasoca, “J. Lydos et la fabula latine,” Revue des études sud-est européennes 7 (1969), 231-37. This literary sequence is stuck in at the beginning of a chapter on the Roman censorship. Some may agree with W. von Christ-W.Schmid-O.Stählin, Geschichte der grieschishen Litteratur (Munich 1924), 2, 1043, "Lydus deviates from his subject in a very silly way whenever any opportunity appears to be offered him to affix a show-piece from the junkroom of his accumulated notes;" others with Bandy's own (xxxii) snide welcome of such digressions: "he writes as though he were still teaching at the university."

Notwithstanding Bakhtin buffs and theoretical twaddlers, it is to these remote textual outposts that Petronians should Star-Trekianly go for such fresh fodder as may yet be left. The following observations are offered in the Voltairean vein: judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

The Roman writers from Lucilius to Juvenal are all in correct chronological order. Then comes Petronius – plain Petronius, no attempt to Hellenise “Arbiter”. Does this mean that Lydus anticipated a Paratore-like Antonine dating? Did any person in late antiquity know (or care?) when the Satyricon was actually written?

The other Roman writers are all poets. Are we to infer that Lydus knew Petronius only as a versifier, perhaps via some prototype of the Anthologia Latina? Cf. Carney, 55: "a prominent feature of the work is epigram-collecting; John's quotations of famous verses anonymously circulated and of notorious lampoons, which he obviously collected, foreshadow Agathias' collection in 570 ... There must have been a vogue for such collections."

Few would argue with Lydus on the obscurity of Persius or Lycophron, though no connection between the Roman and Sophron is made in (say) the still fundamental Conington-Nettleship edition (Oxford 1893) or The Cambridge History of Classical Literature (pb. ed. 1983, vol. 2 pt. 4, 7-14). But, whatever does his assault on Turnus/Juvenal/Petronius mean? What sort of attacks has he in mind? How do abusive attacks mar the satiric norm? They were, after all, the satiric norm of Byzantine satire; cf. my “A Talent to Abuse: Some Aspects of Byzantine Satire,” Byzantinische Forschungen 8 (1982), 19-28. I assessed Turnus the Satirist in an article of that name in Eranos 77 (1979), 57-60. According to Juvenal's scholiasts, he was a freedman whose licensed satire earned him influence at the courts of Titus and Domitian. Sidonius Apollinaris (9. 266-7) bracketed him with his tragedian brother Memor, Ennius, Catullus, Arruntius Stella, Martial, and – Petronius. Two badly corrupted lines (both probably hexameters, though the second one just might be pentametric) on Nero's poisonous pharmacist Locusta survive. All that need here be said about Juvenal is that Lydus' contemporary John Malalas (Chronicle, p. 263 Bonn) perpetuates the tale that he was banished to Egypt by Domitian for satirisng that emperor's infatuation with the pantomime Paris. Whom is Petronius supposed to be capriciously abusing? Assuming Lydus had read the Satyricon – his complaint surely does not suit the separately transmitted poems – was he anticipating the modern view that has Trimalchio as an ersatz Nero? His attitude may be compared and contrasted with another much-disregarded Petronian testimonium from late antiquity, Marius Mercator (early 5th century), Contra Julianum, pp. 9-11 Baluzi: Erubesce, infelicissime, in tanta linguae scurrilis vel potius mimicae obscenitate, namque Martialis et Petronii solus ingenia superasti ... eleganter, scurra, loqueris more tuo et more quo theatrum Arbitri Valeriique detristi. His choice of theatrum will attract those moderns who have interpreted the Cena in such terms, while eleganter surely invokes the Tacitean arbiter elegantiae. Despite Lydus' blanket condemnation, Carney (72, n. 23) could still blithely write about his "taste for satire in general," instancing Juvenal and Persius, while John would gasp at the nonchalant remark of Stephen Gaselee, The Bibliography of Petronius (London 1910) 7: "He wrote purely for his own pleasure and that of his readers, not intending to use the lash of satire against anyone or anything."

John's Greek shows that he was concerned to hammer his point home, perhaps in contemporary polemic: autothen tais loidoriais epexelthontes ton saturikon nomon paretrosan. The final verb is rare outside Christian authors (cf. Lampe's Patristic Greek Lexicon), LSJ having only two references, the present passage the sole example of this sense. He nowhere else uses loidoria or epexerchomai; autothen occurs twice more in De Mag. (3.2; 3.11), in passages of similar tone. The extent to which John actually knew Latin remains a matter of vigorous debate; cf. (e.g.) Carney 48, 68, n. 8; Maas 30, 32; plus my own noticer of him in the Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium (1991) along with “Latin in Byzantium” in (ed. V. Vavrinek) From Late Antiquity to Early Byzantium (Prague 1985) 237-41. I here trim it to Bücheler's contention, supported by Kenneth Rose, The Date and Author of the Satyricon (Leiden 1971), 6, apropos Lydus and Petronius: neque satiras ipsas umquam inspexerat. Yet, there are accurate references by name to specific verses of Juvenal and Persius in De Mag. 1.19-20. Also, the widespread assumption that John took his knowledge second-hand itself argues for a decent command of Latin – how many Greek texts were there that would mention the likes of Turnus – or Petronius?

Thanks to papyri, we know that Juvenal was student fodder in 5th century Antinoupolis; cf. Alan Cameron, Claudian: Poetry and Propaganda at the Court of Honorius (Oxford 1970), 20, for discussion and convenient bibliography. Who knows, Petronians may live to see the day when their author emerges from the sands in like circumstances? What an update that would make for these notes, also a dramatic elimination of the titular question mark from my “Petronius in Byzantium?” Petronian Society Newsletter 20 (1990) 9-10.

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A Bibliography of Petronius’ Nachleben in Modern Literature

by Nikolai Endres

With this bibliography I would like to initiate a dialogue with other Petronius scholars and with teachers interested in disseminating Petronius outside of classics courses. Suggestions are more than welcome. Please contact me at nikolai.endres@wku.edu. Thank you.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Briggs, Ward. “Petronius and Virgil in The Great Gatsby.” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 6 (1999) 226-235.

Drennan, William Ryland. “’I Know Old Niceros and He’s No Liar’: Nick Carraway’s Name in The Great Gatsby.” ANQ n.s. 2 (1989) 145-146.

Fraser, Keath. “Another Reading of The Great Gatsby.” English Studies in Canada 5 (1979) 330-343.

MacKendrick, Paul L. “The Great Gatsby and Trimalchio.” Classical Journal 45 (1950) 307-314.

Rankin, H. D. “Notes on the Comparison of Petronius with Three Moderns.” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 18 (1970) 197-213.

T. S. Eliot

Bacon, Helen H. “The Sibyl in the Bottle.” Virginia Quarterly Review 34 (1958) 262-276.

Cameron, Averil M. “Myth and Meaning in Petronius: Some Modern Comparisons.” Latomus 29 (1970) 397-425.

Lees, Francis Noel. “Mr. Eliot’s Sunday Morning Satura: Petronius and The Waste Land.” Sewanee Review 74 (1966) 339-348.

Nänny, Max. “The Waste Land: A Menippean Satire?” English Studies 66 (1985) 526-535.

Schmeling, Gareth L., and David R. Rebmann. “T. S. Eliot and Petronius.” Comparative Literature Studies 12 (1975) 393-410.

Soldo, John J. “T. S. Eliot and the Classics: The Influence of Petronius.” Markham Review 11 (1982) 36-40.

Sullivan, Richard A. “The Sibyl and the Voice: Eliot’s Epigraphs to The Waste Land.” Yeats Eliot Review 7 (1982) 19-27.

Worthington, Jane. “The Epigraphs to the Poetry of T. S. Eliot.” American Literature 21 (1949) 1-17.

James Joyce

Cameron, Averil M. “Myth and Meaning in Petronius: Some Modern Comparisons.” Latomus 29 (1970) 397-425.

Gagliardi, Donato. Petronio e il romanzo moderno: la fortuna del Satyricon attraverso i secoli. Scandicci, Firenze: Nuova Italia, 1(1993) 174-180.

Killeen, J. F. “James Joyce’s Roman Protoype.” Comparative Literature 9 (1957) 193-203.

Kimball, Jean. “An Ambiguous Faithlessness: Molly Bloom and the Widow of Ephesus.” James Joyce Quarterly 31 (1994) 455-472.

Rankin, H. D. “Notes on the Comparison of Petronius with Three Moderns.” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 18 (1970) 197-213.

Richardson, Brian. “Make it Old: Lucian’s A True Story, Joyce’s Ulysses, and Homeric Patterns in Ancient Fiction.” Comparative Literature Studies 37 (2000) 371-383.

Schork, R. J. Latin and Roman Culture in Joyce. Gainesville: UP of Florida, (1997) 203-205.

Oscar Wilde

Boroughs, Rod. “Oscar Wilde’s Translation of Petronius: The Story of a Literary Hoax.” English Literature in Transition 38 (1995) 9-49.

Robert Browning

Loucks, James F. “The Bishop and Trimalchio Order Their Tombs.” Studies in Browning and His Circle 15 (1988) 35-40.

Mallett, Phillip. “Browning and Petronius.” Notes and Queries n.s. 36 (June 1989) 183-184.

W. H. Auden

McFarland, Ron. “Auden’s Cena: ‘Tonight at Seven-Thirty.’” Southern Humanities Review 17 (1983) 139-147.

Gustave Flaubert

Gagliardi, Donato. Petronio e il romanzo moderno: la fortuna del Satyricon attraverso i secoli. Scandicci, Firenze: Nuova Italia, (1993) 144-151.

---. “Flaubert e Petronio: un dialogo attraverso i secoli.” In Flaubert e la tradizione letteraria. Pisa: ETS; Geneva: Slatkine, (1999) 81-93.

J. K. Huysmans

Collignon, Albert. Pétrone en France. Paris: A. Fontemoing, (1905) 128-130.

Gagliardi, Donato. Petronio e il romanzo moderno: la fortuna del Satyricon attraverso i secoli. Scandicci, Firenze: Nuova Italia, (1993) 161-163.

Marmorale, Enzio V. “Il Petronio della biblioteca di Des Esseintes.” Giornale italiano di filologia 12 (1959) 1-3.

Volpilhac-Auger, Catherine. “L’Image de Pétrone dans la littérature et la pensée françaises, du XVIIe au XIXe siècle.” In Vérité et littérature au XVIIIe siècle. Eds. Paul Aron et al. Paris: Champion, (2001) 297-309.

Anatole France

Gagliardi, Donato. Petronio e il romanzo moderno: la fortuna del Satyricon attraverso i secoli. Scandicci, Firenze: Nuova Italia, (1993) 158-160.

Moncelsi, Rossana. “Petronio e Anatole France.” Atene e Roma 27 (1982): 149-159.

Marcel Proust

Baldwin, Barry. “The Picaresque Mode and the Satire of Antiquity: Proustian or Proletarian?” Hellas 3 (1992): 61-78.

Gagliardi, Donato. Petronio e il romanzo moderno: la fortuna del Satyricon attraverso i secoli. Scandicci, Firenze: Nuova Italia, (1993) 167-174.

Rankin, H. D. “Notes on the Comparison of Petronius with Three Moderns.” Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 18 (1970) 197-213.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Cizek, Eugen. “Céline et Pétrone: un Satyricon moderne.“ Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé (1990) 253-261.

---. “Un Satyricon nouveau? Orsenna, Céline et Pétrone. “ Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé (1995) 277-284.

Gagliardi, Donato. Petronio e il romanzo moderno: la fortuna del Satyricon attraverso i secoli. Scandicci, Firenze: Nuova Italia, (1993) 183-186.

Guerrini, Roberto. “Petronio e Céline.“ Reconditi dell’Istituto Lombardo 107 (1973) 380-392.

Gore Vidal

Clarke, Gerald. “Petronius Americanus: The Ways of Gore Vidal.” Atlantic Monthly (1972) 44-52.

Dick, Bernard F. The Apostate Angel: A Critical Study of Gore Vidal. New York: Random House (1974) 160-167.

Endres, Nikolai. “Roman Fever: Petronius’ Satyricon and Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar.” Unpublished MS and Work in Progress.

Stimpson, Catharine R. “My O My O Myra.” In Gore Vidal: Writer Against the Grain. Ed. Jay Parini. New York: Columbia UP (1992) 183-198.

Miscellaneous

Corbett, Philip B. Petronius. New York: Twayne (1970) 135-138.

Iwasaki, Ryôzô. “Some Allusions to Petronius in Contemporary English Literature.” Annuario dell’Istituto Giapponese di Cultura in Roma 3 (1965-1966) 111-122.

McElroy, Hugh. “The Reception and Use of Petronius: Petronian Pseudepigraphy and Imitation.” Ancient Narrative 1 (2000-2001): 350-378 <http://www.ancientnarrative.com/archive/antocvol01.htm>.

Riikonen, H. K. “Petronius and Modern Fiction: Some Comparative Notes.” Arctos 21 (1987) 87-103.

Schmeling, Gareth, ed. The Novel in the Ancient World. Leiden: Brill (1996) 487-490.

Wright, John. “Disintegrated Assurances: The Contemporary American Response to the Satyricon.” Greece & Rome 23 (1976) 32-39.

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