﻿32 THE AGE OF PETRONIUS ARBITER. 



of the language prevailing in the time of Gallienus. He considers Petronius a native 

 of Gaul, and supports this opinion hy the resemblance of some, chiefly colloquial, 

 phrases used by Petronius to French phrases. 



Wliile he shares the conviction of WagenseU, that the fragment was a fraud and 

 forgery, he does not go quite so far as to charge either Marinus StatUius or any other 

 person with its perpetration, which Wagenseil had done. 



The defence of Marinus Statilius against the charges of Hadrian "^"alcsius and Wa- 

 genseil is contained in two papers,* the first entitled " Responsio," and addressed to 

 M. Mocaenicus soon after the publication of the papers of Wagenseil and Valesius, 

 and the second entitled " Apologia," which was apparently issued several years later. 

 After premising that the first edition of the fragment at Padua was an undertaking in 

 which he had no hand, and for whose defects he could not be held responsible, he 

 shows that the charge of fraud, grounded on the fact that the portions of the fragment 

 which were extant in previous editions did not show the same defects and imperfections 

 which mark the new portions, is not true, because the former could be, and he knew 

 them to have been, corrected by means of the existing improved editions, whUe the 

 latter were given as they were in the manuscript ; thus exiilaining very naturally a 

 suspicious cLrcumstance of which Wagenseil had made a great deal. He then goes 

 on to state, that he had for a long time resisted the importunities of friends, especially 

 of Antonius Grimanus, the Venetian ambassador at Rome, to publish the manuscript, 

 and had at last consented to have the new, hitherto unpublished portions copied for 

 him. These portions were, in spite of his remonstrances, published by the printer 

 Frombottus at Padua, and he complained to Octa\ius Ferrarius of this publication. 

 He mentions that the preface to that first edition contains several erroneous state- 

 ments in reference to the fragment, — for instance, that the manuscript contained, besides 

 the fragment of Petronius, the works of Horace, instead of Catullus, Tibullus, and 

 Propertius, — as well as to himself, which he would have liked to correct, if he had not, 

 by so doing, appeared to authorize the publication, which he did not. He not only 

 disapproved of the Paduan publication, but declares that it must have proceeded from 

 one to whom he was unkno'Nvn, since he is called in the preface StatUeus, instead of 

 Statilius. The remark of Wagenseil, that the scholars at Rome could not possibly 

 judge of the antiquity of the manuscript, since they had only a copy before them, seems 

 to refer to an earlier period of the controversy, when the codex had not yet been sent to 



* Marini Statilii Traguriensis J. C. Eesponsio ad Joh. Christopliori Wagenseilii et Hadriani Valesii Disser- 

 tationes de Traguriensi Petronii Fragmento. Ad M. Mocaenicum V. P. — Apologia ad Patres Conscriptos 

 Rei Publicae Literariae Marini Statilii Traguriensis. 



