Petronius Arbiter was a Roman who lived during the reign of Nero, andâaccording to most historiansâthe author of The Satyricon. We donât know much about Petroniusâlife, but according to Tacitus,âHis days he passed in sleep, and his nights in the business and pleasures of life. . . Indolence had raised him to fame, as energy does others. . .â and he was seen as an âexpert in luxury.â Despite his free- wheeling lifestyle, Petronius became governor of Bithynia, and later Consul. He was exemplary at his jobâhardworking and intelligent. Eventually, Nero chose him to act as his âarbiter of eleganceââa sort of official trendsetter. Nero âthought nothing charming or elegant in luxury unless Petronius had expressed to him his approval of it.â Ofonius Tigellinus, a Praetorian Guard, became jealous of Petroniusâ influence. He accused Petronius of having been part of a conspiracy against Nero.
Petronius didnât want to wait and see if Nero was going to have him executed or not, so he decided to commit suicide. He cut his wrists and bound them so he would bleed out slowly, and died as he lived: eating, drinking, and talking trash. âHe wrote a detailed report of the emperor’s shameful excesses, with the names of his gigolos, his women and their innovations in indecency, and sent the account under seal to Nero.â
Today, Petronius is remembered as the author of The Satyricon, a humorous work of fiction that explores vulgarity and ridiculousness. It follows three miscreants as they feast, fight, and debauch their way through the Mediterranean world.
The Satyricon mocks the extravagant debauchery of Neronian society. However, it is difficult to determine the meaning of The Satyricon partly because it survives in fragments, which makes it difficult to understand, and partly because it is so utterly bizarre, so no one can make heads or tails of it. It has been classified asâamong other thingsâ a mock epic, an early novel, and a Menippean satire. But the first two definitions seem too narrow, and âsatireâ implies a preoccupation with morality that Petronius . . . lacks.
Despite The Satyriconâs raunchy reputation, it does have scholarly value. Unlike most Latin texts, which are poetry or oratory, The Satyricon has sections of informal proseâgiving historians and classicists an insight into how ordinary Romans spoke.
Though it has its confusing and salacious reputation, The Satyricon has stood the test of timeâitâs influenced many great authors. For example, Oscar Wilde mentions Petronius in A Picture of Dorian Gray, stating that Dorian wanted to be the London equivalent of what Petronius was to Rome. The epigraph of T. S. Elliotâs The Wasteland is a quote from The Satyricon. Most famously, F. Scott Fitzgerald based Gatsby, in part, off of the character Trimalchioâa pretentious nouve riche freedmanâand had originally intended to name the book Trimalchio in West Egg.
The Satyricon, whatever else it might be, is a criticism of the excess, depravity, and shameless cupidity that Neronian Rome tried to pass off as sophistication. When other authors reference Petronius, they speak of him to promote restrained elegance and condemn unrefined extravagance. Perhaps, more than anything else, The Satyricon is a testament to three of humanity’s most enduring qualities: pretension, hypocrisy, and bad taste.
Bibliography:
Arbiter, Petronius, Robert Bracht. Branham, and Daniel Kinney. Satyrica. Berkeley: U of California, 1996. Print. Petronius, Titus, Lucius Annaeus. Seneca, and J. P. Sulli- van. The Satyricon and the Apocolocyntosis. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986. Print. Tacitus. Annales, Book 16, AD 14-68.
