﻿THE AGE OF PETROXIUS ARBITER. 29 



of literature, a manuscript containing the poets Catullus, Tibullus, and Propertius, and 

 a portion of Petronius, namely, the banquet of Trimalchio, which existed previously 

 in a fragmentary condition, complete or nearly complete. The news of the discov- 

 ery spread quickly through all parts of Europe, and created, even before the publication 

 of the fragment, a lively interest among scholars. The rumors circulating concerning 

 the manuscript were, naturally, in some instances extravagant. It was supposed that 

 the manuscript contained the entire work of Petronius. The following year, 1664, the 

 printer Frombottus, of Padua, published the fragment ; not, however, from the original 

 manuscript, but from a cojiy, and, as Statilius says, a carelessly made copy,* — those 

 portions which Avere contained in previous editions, and which had, by the labors of 

 successive editors, been corrected and improved, in their improved form, but the newly 

 discovered portions in a very rude and imperfect state. The new publication called 

 forth very opposite opinions, some declaring the fragment a literary fraud, others ex- 

 pressing their belief in its genuineness. A young German scholar, Joh. Christoph. 

 "NVagenseil, who had heard from Abraham Ecchellensis, either in a conversation at 

 Rome, 1663, or by letter at Turin, 1664, of the discovery of the fragment,-]- and saw 

 a few months later, at Paris, in February, 1665, the Paduan edition of the fragment, 

 expressed at once and without much consideration, in a letter to a learned countryman, 

 Christoph. Arnold, his comdction that the pretended fragment was a forgery, and the 

 pretended discoverer of the fragment, Marinus Statilius, the perpetrator of the fraud.J 



* Statil. Apol. : " Nam quid ego de ipso fragmenti contextu dicam imperite atque oscitanter exscripto et 

 a fide sui exemplaris multis in partibus abhorrente." 



t Wagenseil appears to give two different accounts of the way in which he heard of the discovery of the 

 Tragurian fragment. In his Dissertation he says: "Ante hoc biennium [1663, the Dissertation being writ- 

 ten in 1665] cum Romae commorarer, convenit me aliquando eruditus vir, qui nunc fato functus est, Abra- 

 hamus Ecchellensis : cumque vario sermone inter cetera de Italorum recens editis ac postmodum edendis 

 ingenii fetibus coUoqueremur, mentionem injecit Petroniani nequaquam mutili codicis, quem in Dalmatia 

 repertum Venetus ad Pontificem legatus possideret et post suum in patriam, quem maturabat, reditum esset 

 facturus publici juris." In a letter written at Turin, in December, 1664, to C. Arnold, he uses this language : 

 " Ceterum commodum heri CI. Ecchellensis quid ad me perscripsit, quod scire tua omnino interest : Legatus 

 Venetus, qui Romae commoratur, Petronii codicem nactus est nulla sui parte mutilum ; ejusque editionem 

 maturabit, quam primum lares repetere continget ; addit repertum esse in obscure Sclavoniae angulo et 

 accurate descriptum." It will be seen that in the one account he says that he obtained the information in 

 a conversation with Ecchellensis at Rome ; in the other, through a letter from that person at Turin. 

 Whether the discrepancy originates in a lapse of memory or in a want of accuracy and fidelity, does not 

 appear. 



f " Joh. Christophori Wagenseilii de Cena Trimalcionis Nuper sub Petronii nomine vulgata ad Christoph. 

 Arnoldum V. C. Dissertatio," in Pet. Burmann's second edition of Petronius, Amsterd. 1743, Vol. 11. p. 342. 



VOL. VI. NEW SERIES. 5 



