254 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



Dr. Bacon had pointed out to him the oil in their bodies, a 

 year before there was any complaint of any bad taste in the 

 water. Afterwards, when the water was quite impure, they 

 were much less numerous, and as the water became purer 

 their number increased. 

 Dr. C. Beck said, that 



" he had for some time been occupied with an attempt to give an 

 answer to the question in what age Petronius Arbiter, the author of 

 the Satyricon, lived and wrote. After remarking that Petronius was 

 the most important and interesting of the small number of Latin 

 prose-writers of fiction, and after giving a brief account of the con- 

 tents of the Satyricon, so far as it is still extant, he adverted to some 

 of the facts in the external history of the book. He stated that, from 

 several circumstances, it is probable that the portion now left is not 

 more than one fifth, and may be not more than one tenth, of the 

 whole work ; and that this loss of four fifths, or nine tenths, was 

 sustained between the thirteenth and fifteenth century, because John 

 of Salisbury, a writer of the thirteenth century, quotes passages from 

 Petronius which are not to be found in the first printed editions of 

 1470 and succeeding years. He related the discovery of the Tra- 

 gurian fragment, in 1663, at Tragurium in Dalmatia, which, con- 

 taining the description of the banquet of Trimalchio, and forming 

 one of the most important portions of the work, repaired the loss pre- 

 viously sustained to a small extent only. After speaking of the dis- 

 cussion to which this discovery gave rise, and the speedy acknowl- 

 edgment of the genuineness of the fragment, he adverted, in a few 

 words, to the bold fraud of Nodot, in attempting to pass upon the 

 learned world, as genuine, a manuscript which he pretended to have 

 found in Belgrade, but only with partial and temporary success. 



" He next spoke of the great diversity of opinion among scholars as 

 to the age of Petronius, some placing him as early as the times of 

 Augustus, others as late as those of Constantino ; a diversity of opinion 

 ranging, therefor^, over a period of three hundred years. After stat- 

 ing that perhaps the majority of scholars, of the present as well as 

 past ages, — misled by the passage in the Annals of Tacitus, 16. 17 and 

 following, in which is given the history of C. Petronius, a man of con- 

 sular dignity, and, on account of his refined taste and skill in arranging 

 and inventing new pleasures, for a time a great favorite of Nero, — 

 had adopted the hypothesis that this Petronius was the author of the 



