Satyricon, vol 6, Editor's Notes by Petronius (electronic reader TXT) 📖

CHAPTER 9. Gladiator obscene:—

The arena of his activities is, however, that of Venus and not Mars. Petronius is fond of figurative language, and in several other passages, he has made use of the slang of the arena: (chap. 61 ), “I used to fence with my mistress herself, until even the master grew Suspicious”; and again, in chapter 19, he says: “then, too, we were girded higher, and I had so arranged matters that if we came to close quarters, I myself would engage Quartilla, Ascyltos the maid, and Giton the girl.”

Dufour, in commentating upon this expression, Histoire de la Prostitution, vol. III, pp. 92 and 93, remarks: It is necessary to see in Petronius the abominable role which the “obscene gladiator” played; but the Latin itself is clear enough to describe all the secrets of the Roman debauch. “For some women,” says Petronius, in another passage, “will only kindle for canaille and cannot work up an appetite unless they see some slave or runner with his clothing girded up: a gladiator arouses one, or a mule driver, all covered with dust, or some actor posturing in some exhibition on the stage. My mistress belongs to this class, she jumps the fourteen rows from the stage to the gallery and looks for a lover among the gallery gods at the back.”

On “cum fortiter faceres,” compare line 25 of the Oxford fragment of the sixth satire of Juvenal; “hic erit in lecto fortissimus,” which Housman has rendered “he is a valiant mattress-knight.”

CHAPTER 17. “In our neighborhood there are so many Gods that it is easier to meet one of them than it is to find a man.”

Quartilla is here smarting under the sting of some former lover’s impotence. Her remark but gives color to the charge that, owing to the universal depravity of Rome and the smaller cities, men were so worn out by repeated vicious indulgences that it was no easy matter for a woman to obtain satisfaction at their hands.

“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