Delphi Complete Works of Petronius

by Petronius

  “Galla, thou hast already led to the nuptial couch six or seven catamites; thou went seduced by their delicate coiffure and combed beards. Thou hast tried the loins and the members, resembling soaked leather, which could not be made to stand by all the efforts of the wearied hand; the pathic husband and effeminate bed thou desertest, but still thou fallest into similar couches. Seek out some one rough and unpolished as the Curii and Fabii, and savage in his uncouth rudeness; you will find one, but even this puritanical crew has its catamites. Galla, it is difficult to marry a real man.” Martial, vii, 57.

  “No faith is to be placed in appearances. What neighborhood does not reek with filthy practices’?” Juvenal, Sat. ii, 8.

  “While you have a wife such as a lover hardly dare hope for in his wildest prayers; rich, well born, chaste, you, Bassus, expend your energies on boys whom you have procured with your wife’s dowry; and thus does that penis, purchased for so many thousands, return worn out to its mistress, nor does it stand when she rouses it by soft accents of love, and delicate fingers. Have some sense of shame or let us go into court. This penis is not yours, Bassus, you have sold it.” Martial, xii, 99.

  “Polytimus is very lecherous on women, Hypnus is slow to admit he is my Ganymede; Secundus has buttocks fed upon acorns. Didymus is a catamite but pretends not to be. Amphion would have made a capital girl. My friend, I would rather have their blandishments, their naughty airs, their annoying impudence, than a wife with 3,000,000 sesterces.” Martial xii, 76.

  But the crowning piece of infamy is to be found in Martial’s three epigrams upon his wife. They speak as distinctly as does the famous passage in Catullus’ Epithalamium of Manilius and Julia, or Vibia, as later editors have it.

  “Wife, away, or conform to my habits. I am no Curius, Numa, or Tatius. I like to have the hours of night prolonged in luscious cups. You drink water and are ever for hurrying from the table with a sombre mien; you like the dark, I like a lamp to witness my pleasures, and to tire my loins in the light of dawn. Drawers and night gowns and long robes cover you, but for me no girl can be too naked. For me be kisses like the cooing doves; your kisses are like those you give your grandmother in the morning. You do not condescend to assist in the performance by your movements or your sighs or your hand; (you behave) as if you were taking the sacrament. The Phrygian slaves masturbated themselves behind the couch whenever Hector’s wife rode St. George; and, however much Ulysses snored, the chaste Penelope always had her hand there. You forbid my sodomising you. Cornelia granted this favor to Gracchus; Julia to Pompey, Porcia to Brutus. Juno was Jupiter’s Ganymede before the Dardan boy mixed the luscious cup. If you are so devoted to propriety — be a Lucretia to your heart’s content all day, I want a Lais at night.” xi, 105.

  “Since your husband’s mode of life and his fidelity are known to you, and no woman usurps your rights, why are you so foolish as to be annoyed by his boys, (as if they were his mistresses), with whom love is a transient and fleeting affair? I will prove to you that you gain more by the boys than your lord: they make your husband keep to one woman. They give what a wife will not give. ‘I grant that favor,’ you say, ‘sooner than that my husband’s love should wander from my bed.’ It is not the same thing. I want the fig of Chios, not a flavorless fig; and in you this Chian fig is flavorless. A woman of sense and a wife ought to know her place. Let the boys have what concerns them, and confine yourself to what concerns you.” xii, 97.

  “Wife, you scold me with a harsh voice when I’m caught with a boy, and inform me that you too have a bottom. How often has Juno said the same to the lustful Thunderer? And yet he sleeps with the tall Ganymede. The Tirynthian Hero put down his bow and sodomised Hylas. Do you think that Megaera had no buttocks? Daphne inspired Phoebus with love as she fled, but that flame was quenched by the OEbalian boy. However much Briseis lay with her bottom turned toward him, the son of AEacus found his beardless friend more congenial to his tastes. Forbear then, to give masculine names to what you have, and, wife, think that you have two vaginas.” xi, 44

  CHAPTER 26.

  “Quartilla applied a curious eye to a chink, purposely made, watching their childish dalliance with lascivious attention.”

  Martial, xi, 46, makes mention of the fact that patrons of houses of ill fame had reason to beware of needle holes in the walls, through which their misbehaviour could be appreciatively scrutinized by outsiders; and in the passage of our author we find yet another instance of the same kind. One is naturally led to recall the “peep-houses” which were a feature of city life in the nineties. There was a notorious one in Chicago, and another in San Francisco. A beautiful girl, exquisitely dressed, would entice the unwary stranger into her room: there the couple would disrobe and the hero was compelled to have recourse to the “right of capture,” before executing the purpose for which he entered the house. The entertainment usually cost him nothing beyond a moderate fee and a couple of bottles of beer, or wine, if he so desired. The “management” secured its profit from a different and more prurient source. The male actor in this drama was sublimely ignorant of the fact that the walls were plentifully supplied with “peep-holes” through which appreciative onlookers witnessed his Corybantics at one dollar a head. There would sometimes be as many as twenty such witnesses at a single performance.

  CHAPTER 34. Silver Skeleton, et seq.

  Philosophic dogmas concerning the brevity and uncertainty of life were ancient even in the time of Herodotus. They have left their mark upon our language in the form of more than one proverb, but in none is this so patent as “the skeleton at the feast.” In chapter lxxviii of Euterpe, we have an admirable citation. In speaking of the Egyptians, he says: “At their convivial banquets, among the wealthy classes, when they have finished supper, a man carries round in a coffin the image of a dead body carved in wood, made as life-like as possible in color and workmanship, and in size generally about one or two cubits in length; and showing this to each of the company, he says: ‘Look upon this, then drink and enjoy yourself; for when dead you will be like this.’ This is the practice they have at their drinking parties.” According to Plutarch, (Isis and Osiris, chapter 17.) the Greeks adopted this Egyptian custom, and there is, of course, little doubt that the Romans took it from the Greeks. The aim of this custom was, according to Scaliger, to bring the diners to enjoy the sweets of life while they were able to feel enjoyment, and thus to abandon themselves to pleasure before death deprived them of everything. The verses which follow bring this out beautifully. In the Copa of Virgil we find the following:

  “Wine there! Wine and dice! Tomorrow’s fears shall fools alone benumb! By the ear Death pulls me. ‘Live!’ he whispers softly, ‘Live! I come.’”

  The practical philosophy of the indefatigable roues sums itself up in this sentence uttered by Trimalchio. The verb “vivere” has taken a meaning very much broader and less special, than that which it had at the time when it signified only the material fact of existence. The voluptuaries of old Rome were by no means convinced that life without license was life. The women of easy virtue, living within the circle of their friendships, after the fashion best suited to their desires, understood that verb only after their own interpretation, and the philologists soon reconciled themselves to the change. In this sense it was that Varro employed “vivere,” when he said: “Young women, make haste to live, you whom adolescence permits to enjoy, to eat, to love, and to occupy the chariot of Venus (Veneris tenere bigas).”

  But a still better example of the extension in the meaning of this word is to be found in an inscription on the tomb of a lady of pleasure. This inscription was composed by a voluptuary of the school of Petronius.

  ALIAE. RESTITVTAE. ANIMAE. DVLCISSIMAE.

  BELLATOR. AVG. LIB. CONIVGI. CARISSIMAE.

  AMICI. DVM. VIVIMVS. VIVAMUS.

  In this inscription, it is almost impossible to translate the last three words. “While we live, let us live,” is inadequate, to say the least. So far did this doctrine go that
latterly it was deemed necessary to have a special goddess as a patron. That goddess, if we may rely upon the authority of Festus, took her name “Vitula” from the word “Vita” or from the joyous life over which she was to preside.

  CHAPTER 36.

  “At the corners of the tray we also noted four figures of Marsyas and from their bladders spouted a highly seasoned sauce upon fish which were swimming about as if in a tide-race.”

  German scholars have adopted the doctrine that Marsyas belonged to that mythological group which they designate as “Schlauch-silen” or, as we would say in English, “Wineskin-bearing Silenuses.” Their hypothesis seems to be based upon the discovery of two beautiful bas-reliefs of the age of Vespasian, which were excavated near the Rostra Vetera in the Forum. Sir Theodore Martin has a note on these bas-reliefs which I quote in extenso:

  “In the Forum stood a statue of Marsyas, Apollo’s ill-starred rival. It probably bore an expression of pain, which Horace humorously ascribes to dislike of the looks of the Younger Novius, who is conjectured to have been of the profession and nature of Shylock. A naked figure carrying a wineskin, which appears upon each of two fine bas-reliefs of the time of Vespasian found near the Rostra Vetera in the Forum during the excavations conducted within the last few years by Signor Pietro Rosa, and which now stand in the Forum, is said, by archaeologists, to represent Marsyas. Why they arrive at this conclusion, except as arguing, from the spot where these bas-reliefs were found, that they were meant to perpetuate the remembrance of the old statue of Marsyas, is certainly not very apparent from anything in the figure itself.” Martin’s Horace, vol. 2, pp 145-6.

  Hence German philologists render “utriculis” by the German equivalent for “Wineskins.”

  “The Romans,” says Weitzius, “had two sources of water-supply, through underground channels, and through channels supported by arches. As adjuncts to these channels there were cisterns (or castella, as they were called). From these reservoirs the water was distributed to the public through routes more or less circuitous and left the cisterns through pipes, the diameter of which was reckoned in either twelfths or sixteenths of a Roman foot. At the exits of the pipes were placed stones or stone figures, the water taking exit from these figures either by the mouth, private parts or elsewhere, and falling either to the ground or into some stone receptacle such as a basket. Various names were given these statuettes: Marsyae, Satyri, Atlantes, Hermae, Chirones, Silani, Tulii.”

  No one who has been through the Secret Museum at Naples will find much difficulty in recalling a few of these heavily endowed examples to mind, and our author, in choosing Marsyae, adds a touch of sarcastic realism, for statues of Marysas were often set up in free cities, symbolical, as it were, of freedom. In such a setting as the present, they would be the very acme of propriety.

  “The figures,” says Gonzala de Salas, “formerly placed at fountains, and from which water took exit either from the mouth or from some other part, took their forms from the several species of Satyrs. The learned Wouweren has commented long and learnedly upon this passage, and his emendation ‘veretriculis’ caused me to laugh heartily. And as a matter of fact, I affirm that such a meaning is easily possible.” Professor E. P. Crowell, the first American scholar to edit Petronius, gravely states in his preface that “the object of this edition is to provide for class-room use an expurgated text,” and I note that he has tactfully omitted the “wineskins” from his edition.

  In this connection the last sentence in the remarks of Wouweren, alluded to above, is strangely to the point. After stating his emendation of “veretriculis or veretellis” for “utriculis,” he says: “Unless someone proves that images of Marsyas were fashioned in the likeness of bag-pipers,” a fine instance of clarity of vision for so dark an age.

  CHAPTER 40.

  “Drawing his hunting-knife, he plunged it fiercely into the boar’s side, and some thrushes flew out of the gash.”

  In the winter of 1895 a dinner was given in a New York studio. This dinner, locally known as the “Girl in the Pie Dinner,” was based upon Petronius, Martial, and the thirteenth book of Athenaeus. In the summer of 1919, I had the questionable pleasure of interviewing the chef-caterer who got it up, and he was, at the time, engaged in trying to work out another masterpiece to be given in California. The studio, one of the most luxurious in the world, was transformed for the occasion into a veritable rose grotto, the statuary was Pompeian, and here and there artistic posters were seen which were nothing if not reminiscent of Boulevard Clichy and Montmartre in the palmiest days. Four negro banjo players and as many jubilee singers titillated the jaded senses of the guests in a manner achieved by the infamous saxophone syncopating jazz of the Barbary Coast of our times. The dinner was over. The four and one half bottles of champagne allotted to each Silenus had been consumed, and a well-defined atmosphere of bored satiety had begun to settle down when suddenly the old-fashioned lullaby “Four and Twenty Blackbirds” broke forth from the banjoists and singers. Four waiters came in bearing a surprisingly monstrous object, something that resembled an impossibly large pie. They, placed it carefully in the center of the table. The negro chorus swelled louder and louder— “Four and Twenty Blackbirds Baked in a Pie.”

  The diners, startled into curiosity and then into interest, began to poke their noses against this gigantic creation of the baker. In it they detected a movement not unlike a chick’s feeble pecking against the shell of an egg. A quicker movement and the crust ruptured at the top.

  A flash of black gauze and delicate flesh showed within. A cloud of frightened yellow canaries flew out and perched on the picture frames and even on the heads and shoulders of the guests.

  But the lodestone which drew and held the eyes of all the revellers was an exquisitely slender, girlish figure amid the broken crust of the pie. The figure was draped with spangled black gauze, through which the girl’s marble white limbs gleamed like ivory seen through gauze of gossamer transparency. She rose from her crouching posture like a wood nymph startled by a satyr, glanced from one side to the other, and stepped timidly forth to the table.

  CHAPTER 56. Contumelia — Contus and Melon (malum).

  All translators have rendered “contus” by “pole,” notwithstanding the fact that the word is used in a very different sense in Priapeia, x, 3: “traiectus conto sic extendere pedali,” and contrary to the tradition which lay behind the gift of an apple or the acceptance of one. The truth of this may be established by many passages in the ancient writers.

  In the “Clouds” of Aristophanes, Just Discourse, in prescribing the rules and proprieties which should in govern the education and conduct of the healthy young man says:

  “You shall rise up from your seat upon your elders’ approach; you shall never be pert to your parents or do any other unseemly act under the pretence of remodelling the image of Modesty. You will not rush off to the dancing-girl’s house, lest while you gaze upon her charms, some whore should pelt you with an apple and ruin your reputation.”

  “This were gracious to me as in the story old to the maiden fleet of foot was the apple golden fashioned which unloosed her girdle long-time girt.” Catullus ii.

  “I send thee these verses recast from Battiades, lest thou shouldst credit thy words by chance have slipped from my mind, given o’er to the wandering winds, as it was with that apple, sent as furtive love token by the wooer, which out-leaped from the virgin’s chaste bosom: for, placed by the hapless girl ‘neath her soft vestment, and forgotten — when she starts at her mother’s approach, out ’tis shaken: and down it rolls headlong to the ground, whilst a tell-tale flush mantles the cheek of the distressed girl.” Catullus 1xv.

  “But I know what is going on, and I intend presently to tell my master; for I do not want to show myself less grateful than the dogs which bark in defence of those who feed and take care of them. An adulterer is laying siege to the household — a young man from Elis, one of the Olympian fascinators; he sends neatly folded notes every day to o
ur master’s wife, together with faded bouquets and half-eaten apples.” Alciphron, iii, 62. The words are put into the mouth of a rapacious parasite who feels that the security of his position in the house is about to be shaken.

  “I didn’t mind your kissing Cymbalium half-a-dozen times, you only disgraced yourself; but — to be always winking at Pyrallis, never to drink without lifting the cup to her, and then to whisper to the boy, when you handed it to him, not to fill it for anyone but her — that was too much! And then — to bite a piece off an apple, and when you saw that Duphilus was busy talking to Thraso, to lean forward and throw it right into her lap, without caring whether I saw it or not; and she kissed it and put it into her bosom under her girdle! It was scandalous! Why do you treat me like this?” Lucian, Dial. Hetairae, 12. These words are spoken by another apostle of direct speech; a jealous prostitute who is furiously angry with her lover, and in no mood to mince matters in the slightest.

  Aristxnetus, xxv, furnishes yet another excellent illustration. The prostitute Philanis, in writing to a friend of the same ancient profession, accuses her sister of alienating her lover’s affections. I avail myself of Sheridan’s masterly version.

  PHILANIS TO PETALA.

  As yesterday I went to dine

  With Pamphilus, a swain of mine,

  I took my sister, little heeding

  The net I for myself was spreading

  Though many circumstances led

  To prove she’d mischief in her head.

  For first her dress in every part

  Was studied with the nicest art

  Deck’d out with necklaces and rings,

  And twenty other foolish things;

  And she had curl’d and bound her hair