THE SATYRICON OF TITUS PETRONIUS ARBITER
"Are our rhetoricians tormented by a new tribe of
Furies when they cry: 'These scars I earned in the struggle for popular rights; I
sacrificed this eye for you: where is a guiding hand to lead me to my children? My
knees are hamstrung, and cannot support my body'? Though indeed even these speeches
might be endured if they smoothed the path of aspirants to oratory. But as it is,
the sole result of this bombastic matter and these loud empty phrases is that a
pupil who steps into a court thinks that he has been carried into another world. I
believe that college makes complete fools of our young men, because they see and
hear nothing of ordinary life there. It is pirates standing in chainson the beach,
tyrants pen in hand ordering sons to cut off their fathers' heads, oracles in time
of pestilence demanding the blood of three virgins or more, honey-balls of phrases,
every word and act besprinkled with poppy-seed and sesame.
[
2]
People who are fed on this diet can no more be sensible than people who
live in the kitchen can be savoury. With your permission I must tell you the truth,
that you teachers more than anyone have been the ruin of true eloquence. Your
tripping, empty tones stimulate certain absurd effects into being, with the result
that the substance of your speech languishes and dies. In the age: when Sophocles or
Euripides found the inevitable word for their verse, young men were not yet being
confined to set speeches. When Pindar and the nine lyric poets were too modest to
use Homer's lines, no cloistered
[p. 5] pedant had yet ruined young men's
brains. I need not go to the poets for evidence. I certainly do not find that Plato
or Demosthenes took any course of training of this kind. Great style, which, if I
may say so, is also modest style, is never blotchy and bloated. It rises supreme by
virtue of its natural beauty. Your flatulent and formless flow of words is a modern
immigrant from Asia to Athens. Its breath fell upon the mind of ambitious youth like
the influence of a baleful planet, and when the old tradition was once broken,
eloquence halted and grew dumb. In a word, who after this came to equal the
splendour of Thucydides or Hyperides? Even poetry did not glow with the colour of
health, but the whole of art, nourished on one universal diet, lacked the vigour to
reach the grey hairs of old age. The decadence in painting was the same, as soon as
Egyptian charlatans had found a short cut to this high calling."
[
3]
Agamemnon
1 would
not allow me to stand declaiming out in the colonnade longer than he had spent
sweating inside the school. “Your talk has an uncommon flavour, young
man,” he said, "and what is most unusual, you appreciate good sense. I will
not therefore deceive you by making a mystery of my art. The fact is that the
teachers are not to blame for these exhibitions. They are in a madhouse, and they
must gibber. Unless they speak to the taste of their young masters they will be left
alone in the colleges, as Cicero remarks.
2 Like the toadies [of Comedy] cadging after the rich
man's dinners, they think first about what is calculated
[p. 7] to please
their audience. They will never gain their object unless they lay traps for the ear.
A master of oratory is like a fisherman; he must put the particular bait on his hook
which he knows will tempt the little fish, or he may sit waiting on his rock with no
hope of a catch.
[
4]
Then what is to be done? It is the
parents who should be attacked for refusing to allow their children to profit by
stern discipline. To begin with they consecrate even their young hopefuls, like
everything else, to ambition. Then if they are in; a hurry for the fulfilment of
their vows, they drive the unripe schoolboy into the law courts, and thrust
eloquence, the noblest of callings, upon children who are still struggling into the
world. If they would allow work to go on step by step, so that bookish boys were
steeped in diligent reading, their minds formed by wise sayings, their pens
relentless in tracking down the right word, their ears giving a long hearing to
pieces they wished to imitate, and if they would convince themselves that what took
a boy's fancy was never fine; then the grand old style of oratory would have its
full force and splendour. As it is, the boy wastes his time at school, and the young
man is a laughing-stock in the courts. Worse than that, they will not admit when
they are old the errors they have once imbibed at school. But pray do not think that
I impugn Lucilius's rhyme
3 about modesty. I
will myself put my own views in a poem:
[
5]
If any man seeks for success in stern art and
applies his mind to great tasks, let him first perfect his character by the rigid
law of frugality. Nor must he care for the lofty frown of the tyrant's palace, or
scheme for suppers with prodigals like a client, or drown the fires of his wit with
wine in the company
[p. 9] of the wicked, or sit before the stage applauding
an actor's grimaces for a price.
“But whether the fortress of armoured Tritonis smiles upon him, or the land
where the Spartan farmer lives, or the home of the Sirens, let him give the
years of youth to poetry, and let his fortunate soul drink of the Maeonian
fount. Later, when he is full of the learning of the Socratic school, let him
loose the reins, and shake the weapons of mighty Demosthenes like a free man.
Then let the company of Roman writers pour about him, and, newly unburdened from
the music of Greece, steep his soul and transform his taste. Meanwhile, let him
withdraw from the courts and suffer his pages to run free, and in secret make
ringing strains in swift rhythm; then let him proudly tell tales of feasts, and
wars recorded in fierce chant, and lofty words such as undaunted Cicero uttered.
Gird up thy soul for these noble ends; so shalt thou be fully inspired, and
shalt pour out words in swelling torrent from a heart the Muses love.”
[
6]
I was listening to him so carefully that I did not
notice Ascyltos slipping away. I was pacing the gardens in the heat of our
conversation, when a great crowd of students came out into the porch, apparently
from some master whose extemporary harangue had followed Agamemnon's
discourse.
4 So while the young men were laughing at his epigrams, and denouncing
the tendency of his style as a whole, I took occasion to steal away and began
hurriedly to look for Ascyltos. But I did not remember the road accurately, and I
did not know where our lodgings were. So wherever I went, I kept coming back to
[p. 11] the same spot, till I was tired out with walking, and dripping with
sweat.
[
7]
At last I went up to an old woman who
was selling country vegetables and said,“Please, mother, do you happen to know
where I live?” She was charmed with such a polite fool.“Of course I
do,” she said, and got up and began to lead the way. I thought her a
prophetess . . . ., and when we had got into an obscure quarter the obliging old
lady pushed back a patchwork curtain and said,“This should be your
house.” I was saying that I did not remember it, when I noticed some men and
naked women walking cautiously about among placards of price. Too late, too late I
realized that I had been taken into a bawdy-house. I cursed the cunning old woman,
and covered my head, and began to run through the brothel to another part, when just
at the entrance Ascyltos met me, as tired as I was, and half-dead. It looked as
though the same old lady had brought him there. I hailed him with a laugh, and asked
him what he was doing in such an unpleasant spot.
[
8]
He mopped himself with his hands and said, “If you only knew what has happened
to me.”
“What is it?” I said. “Well,” he said, on the point of
fainting, “I was wandering all over the town without finding where I had left
my lodgings, when a respectable person came up to me and very kindly offered to
direct me. He took me round a number of dark turnings and brought me out here,
and then began to offer me money and solicit me. A woman got threepence out of
me for a room, and he had already seized me. The worst would have happened if I
had not been stronger than he.” . . .
Every one in the place seemed to be drunk on aphrodisiacs . . . but our united forces
defied our assailant. . . .
[
9]
I dimly saw Giton standing on the kerb of the
road
[p. 13] in the dark, and hurried towards him. . . . I was asking my
brother whether he had got ready anything for us to eat, when the boy sat down at
the head of the bed, and began to cry and rub away the tears with his thumb. My
brother's looks made me uneasy, and I asked what had happened. The boy was unwilling
to tell, but I added threats to entreaties, and at last he said, “That brother
or friend of yours ran into our lodgings a little while ago and began to offer
me violence. I shouted out, and he drew his sword and said, 'If you are a
Lucretia, you have found your Tarquin.'”
When I heard this I shook my fist in Ascyltos's face. “What have you to
say?” I cried, “You dirty fellow whose very breath is unclean?”
Ascyltos first pretended to be shocked, and then made a great show of fight, and
roared out much more loudly: “Hold your tongue, you filthy prizefighter. You
were kicked out of the ring in disgrace. Be quiet, Jack Stab-inthe-dark. You
never could face a clean woman in your best days. I was the same kind of brother
to you in the garden, as this boy is now in the lodgings.”
[
10]
“You sneaked away from the master's
talk,” I said.“Well, you fool, what do you expect? I was perishing of
hunger. Was I to go on listening to his views, all broken bottles and
interpretation of dreams? By God, you are far worse than I am, flattering a poet
to get asked out to dinner.”
Then our sordid quarrelling ended in a shout of laughter, and we retired afterwards
more peaceably for what remained to be done. . . .
But his insult came into my head again. “Ascyltos,” I said, “I am
sure we cannot agree. We will
[p. 15] divide our luggage, and try to
defeat our poverty by our own earnings. You are a scholar, and so am I. Besides,
I will promise not to stand in the way of your success. Otherwise twenty things
a day will bring us into opposition, and spread scandal about us all over the
town.” Ascyltos acquiesced, and said, “But as we are engaged to
supper to-night like a couple of students, do not let us waste the evening. I
shall be pleased to look out for new lodgings and a new brother to-morrow?”
“Waiting for one's pleasures is weary work,” I replied. . . .
[
11]
I went sight-seeing all over the town and then came
back to the little room. At last I could ask for kisses openly. I hugged the boy
close in my arms and had my fill of a happiness that might be envied. All was not
over when Ascyltos came sneaking up to the door, shook back the bars by force, and
found me at play with my brother. He filled the room with laughter and applause,
pulled me out of the cloak I had over me, and said, “What are you at, my
pureminded brother, you that would break up our partnership?” Not content
with gibing, he pulled the strap off his bag, and began to give me a regular
flogging, saying sarcastically as he did so: “Don't make this kind of bargain
with your brother.” . . .
[
12]
It was already dusk when we came into the market.
We saw a quantity of things for sale, of no great value, though the twilight very
easily cast a veil over their shaky reputations. So for our part we stole a cloak
and carried it off, and seized the opportunity of displaying the extreme edge of it
in one corner of
[p. 17] the market, hoping that the bright colour might
attract a purchaser. In a little while a countryman, whom I knew by sight, came up
with a girl, and began to examine the cloak narrowly. Ascyltos in turn cast a glance
at the shoulders of our country customer,
5 and was suddenly
struck dumb with astonishment. I could not look upon the man myself without a stir,
for he was the person, I thought, who had found the shirt in the lonely spot where
we lost it. He was certainly the very man. But as Ascyltos was afraid to trust his
eyes for fear of doing something rash, he first came up close as if he were a
purchaser, and pulled the shirt off the countryman's shoulders, and then felt it
carefully.
[
13]
By a wonderful stroke of luck the
countryman had never laid his meddling hands on the seam, and he was offering the
thing for sale with a condescending air as a beggar's leavings. When Ascyltos saw
that our savings were untouched, and what a poor creature the seller was, he took me
a little aside from the crowd, and said, “Do you know, brother, the treasure I
was grumbling at losing has come back to us. That is the shirt, and I believe it
is still full of gold pieces: they have never been touched. What shall we do?
How shall we assert our legal rights?”
I was delighted, not only because I saw a chance of profit, but because fortune had
relieved me of a very disagreeable suspicion. I was against any roundabout methods.
I thought we should proceed openly by civil process, and obtain a decision in the
courts if they refused to give up other people's property to the rightful owners.
[p. 19]
[
14]
But Ascyltos was afraid of the law: “Nobody
knows us in this place,” he said, "and nobody will believe what we say, I
should certainly like to buy the thing, although it is ours and we know it. It is
better to get back our savings cheaply than to embark upon the perils of a lawsuit:
“Of what avail are laws where money rules alone, and the poor suitor can never
succeed? The very men who mock at the times by carrying the Cynic's scrip have
sometimes been known to betray the truth for a price. So a lawsuit is nothing
more than a public auction, and the knightly juror who sits listening to the
case gives his vote as he is paid.”
But we had nothing in hand except one sixpence,
6 with which we had meant to buy pease and lupines. And so for fear our
prize should escape us, we decided to sell the cloak cheaper than we had intended,
and so to incur a slight loss for a greater gain. We had just unrolled our piece,
when a veiled woman, who was standing by the countryman, looked carefully at the
marks, and then seized the cloak with both hands, shouting at the top of her voice,
“Thieves!” We were terrified, but rather than do nothing, we began
to tug at the dirty torn shirt, and cried out with equal bitterness that these
people had taken some spoil that was ours. But the dispute was in no way even, and
the dealers who were attracted by the noise of course laughed at our indignation,
since one side was laying claim to an expensive cloak, the other to a set of rags
[p. 21] which would not serve to make a decent patchwork.
[
15]
Ascyltos now cleverly stopped their laughter by calling
for silence and saying, “Well, you see, every one has an affection for his own
things. If they will give us our shirt, they shall have their cloak.” The
countryman and the woman were satisfied with this exchange, but by this time some
policemen had been called in to punish us; they wanted to make a profit out of the
cloak, and tried to persuade us to leave the disputed property with them and let a
judge look into our complaints the next day. They urged that besides the
counter-claims to these garments, a far graver question arose, since each party must
lie under suspicion of thieving. It was suggested that trustees should be appointed,
and one of the traders, a bald man with a spotty forehead, who used sometimes to do
law work, laid hands on the cloak and declared that he would produce it to-morrow.
But clearly the object was that the cloak should be deposited with a pack of thieves
and be seen no more, in the hope that we should not keep our appointment, for fear
of being charged.
It was obvious that our wishes coincided with his, and chance came to support the
wishes of both sides. The countryman lost his temper when we said his rags must be
shown in public, threw the shirt in Ascyltos's face, and asked us, now that we had
no grievance, to give up the cloak which had raised the whole quarrel. . . .
We thought we had got back our savings. We hurried away to the inn and shut the door,
and then had a laugh at the wits of our false accusers and at the dealers too, whose
mighty sharpness had returned our money to us. “I never want to grasp what I
desire at once, nor do easy victories delight me.”
[p. 23]
[
16]
Thanks to Giton, we found supper ready, and we were
making a hearty meal, when a timid knock sounded at the door.
We turned pale and asked who it was. “Open the door,” said a voice,
“and you will see.” While we were speaking, the bar slipped and
fell of its own accord, the door suddenly swung open, and let in our visitor. It was
the veiled woman who had stood with the countryman a little while before. “Did
you think you had deceived me?” she said. “I am Quartilla's maid.
You intruded upon her devotions before her secret chapel. Now she has come to
your lodgings, and begs for the favour of a word with you. Do not be uneasy; she
will not be angry, or punish you for a mistake. On the contrary, she wonders how
Heaven conveyed such polite young men to her quarter.” We still said
nothing,
[
17]
and showed no approval one way or the
other. Then Quartilla herself came in with one girl by her, sat down on my bed, and
cried for a long while. We did not put in a word even then, but sat waiting in
amazement for the end of this carefully arranged exhibition of grief. When this very
designing rain had ceased, she drew her proud head out of her cloak and wrung her
hands together till the joints cracked. “You bold creatures,” she
said,“where did you learn to outrival the robbers of romance? Heaven knows
I pity you. A man cannot look upon forbidden things and go free. Indeed the gods
walk abroad so commonly in our streets that it is easier to meet a god than a
man. Do not suppose that I have come here to avenge myself. I am more sorry for
your tender years than for my own wrongs. For I still believe that heedless
youth has led you into deadly sin. I lay tormenting myself that night and
[p. 25] shivering with such a dreadful chill that I even fear an attack
of tertian ague. So I asked for a remedy in my dreams, and was told to find you
out and allay the raging of my disease by the clever plan you would show me. But
I am not so greatly concerned about a cure; deep in my heart burns a greater
grief, which drags me down to inevitable death. I am afraid that youthful
indiscretion will lead you to publish abroad what you saw in the chapel of
Priapus, and reveal our holy rites to the mob. So I kneel with folded hands
before you, and beg and pray you not to make a laughing-stock of our nocturnal
worship, not to deride the immemorial mystery to which less than a thousand
souls hold the key.”
[
