﻿THE AGE OF PETRONIUS ARBITER. 43 



indulged in sleep, in order tliat his death, though compulsory, might seem accidental. 

 Not even in his will (" codicUlis"), as was the custom of most who perished by the 

 order of the emperor (" quod plerique pereuntium"), did he flatter Nero, or Tigellinus, 

 or any other of the powerful ; but he described the disgraceful vices of the emperor 

 under the names of lewd men and women, indicating the strangeness and novelty of 

 each excess ("etnovitate cujusque stupri"), and sent this statement sealed to Nero. 

 He then broke his seal-ring, that it might not serve to bring others mto danger. Nero, 

 reflecting how the manner of spending his nights could have become known, remembers 

 Silia, a woman of some position in society in consequence of her marriage with a sen- 

 ator, employed by the emperor for every act of lust, and an intimate friend of Petronius. 

 She is sent into exile for having revealed what she had seen and endured. 



This is the passage from which many scholars have concluded that the Petronius of 

 whose life, character, and death Tacitus gives this account, and the author of the 

 Satyricon, are one and the same person ; that the Satyricon as we now possess it is a 

 portion of the statement of the amours of Nero sent by Petronius before his death to 

 the emperor ; and that, consequently, the author of this work is a contemporary of Nero. 

 I have been thus particular in giving the original and substance of the passage of Taci- 

 tus, that the reader may judge for himself how slight and insufiicient is the ground 

 on which this opinion is based. It is apparent that two or three ckcumstances, either 

 of no great weight or misunderstood, have given rise to this opinion. The first is the 

 name Petronius, common to our author and the favorite of Nero. We shall by and by 

 see that this name occurs in Roman history, from the earliest to the latest period, with 

 more or less frequency ; so that, unaccompanied by other circumstances, it can throw 

 no light on the question as to the time in which our author lived. The second circum- 

 stance is the appellation " Arbiter," belonging to our author, and, in the modified form 

 " elegantiae arbiter," given by Tacitus to the consular to designate his skill in preparing 

 choice pleasures, and indicate the office and position which, in consequence of it, he 

 occupied at the court of Nero. The third circumstance is the nature and character of 

 the communication sent by Petronius to Nero, and which resembled somewhat some 

 of the scenes described by our author. 



I have already, in another place,* shown that the complete work of Petronius 

 would be a book of not less than 700 octavo pages, and might extend to 1500 pages. 

 Even if we allow that Petronius li^■ed several days after his arrest,f the greater portion 



* Pages 34 and 35. 



t The expression " neque tamen praeceps vitam expulit " indicates that Petronius proceeded in a very 



