﻿36 THE AGE OF PETRONIUS ARBITER. 



Hieronpnus — mention Petronius, the earlier — Quintilian, Suetonius, and Pliny — do 

 not. His second reason is, that Lutatius Placidus places Petronius after Statins Papi- 

 rius, and says that the fonner borrowed from the latter the verse : 



" Primus in orbe decs fecit timor." 



The last argument -which he adduces is the strong language in -wliich Petronius com- 

 plains of the decline of art, especially of painting, of which he says that not even the 

 least vestige is left: "Ipse Petronius de hac controversia diserte pronuntiat in ilia 

 elegantissima de sui temporis vitiis querela ac de ruina bonarum artium, inter quas 

 picturae ne minimum quidem vestigium rehquum esse dolet." 



The controversy concerning the genuineness of the Tragurian fragment was by no 

 means confined to Wagenscil, Yalesius, and Statilius. Other scholars took a part in it, 

 some on the one, others on the other side. Johannes SchefFer, bom at Strasburg in 

 1621, and Professor at the University of Upsala, where he died, 1679, had received from 

 Nic. Hcinsius a copy of the Paduan edition of the fragment.* After stating very fairly 

 the arguments which had been advanced against the genuineness of the fragment, he 

 proceeds to refute them with considerable ability. Much stress having been laid by 

 the opxwnents of the genuineness of the fragment on the circiunstance that it contained 

 expressions which occiUTcd neither in other writers nor in the other portions of Petro- 

 nius himself, Schefi"er observes that there are many single expressions in Cicero used in 

 a meaning which, in other parts of Cicero, is expressed by different words, and words, 

 too, in common use, not only in other writers, but in Cicero himself He very properly 

 thinks but little of the circumstance that so valuable a manuscript remained so long 

 concealed, a circumstance which the opponents had used to throAV suspicion upon the 

 fragment, and goes on to say, that it has frequently happened that highly valuable 

 manuscripts were in the possession of, and withheld from publication by, persons who 

 did not understand their A^alue, or scholars who reserved them for future examination 

 and publication.^ With regard to the old-fashioned expressions which occur in the 

 fragment, he remarks: "Sed et antiqua pluscula eo respectu possunt hie esse occupata, 

 quando plebs retinentior est fere sermonis antiqui, nee nisi sero, quem ceteri arbitran- 

 tur, cultum adhibere adchscit." On one point Scheffer differs from Statilius and agrees 



* " Joannis Schefferi Argentoratensis de Fragmenti hujus Traguriani vero auctore Dissertatio," in Pet. 

 Burmann's second edition, Amsterdam, 1643, Vol. II. p. 394. 



t How true this view of Scheffer's is even in our own time is sufficiently illustrated by the discovery of 

 a large portion of "De Ke Publica" of Cicero by A. Mai in 1822, and of the " Institutiones " of Gajus 

 by Niebuhr in 1816. 



