﻿THE AGE OF PETROXICS ARBITER. 49 



is, however, not very successful. He can find none except the freedwoman Acte, who 

 was for some time the favorite of the emperor. He overlooks the cu'cumstauce, that 

 Fortunata was actually the wife, not the concuhine, of Trimalcliio, while Acte was 

 nothing but the mistress of Xero, who had at the time a lawful wife, Octavia; he 

 overlooks the fact, that Trimalchio and Fortunata are described as of the same origin 

 and social condition, while Xero was a member of the imperial famUy, and Acte a 

 freedwoman : he overlooks that Trimalchio ascribes his success in life to the manaee- 

 ment and devotion of his wife, while, of coui'se, nothing of the kind is, or could be, 

 related of Acte. 



"When Eumolpus, at his first meeting with Encolpius (c. 83. 8), says, " Ego poeta 

 sum," De Salas at once discovers an allusion to Xero, sapng : " Eum ad insaniam 

 usque proclivem prodiderunt ad carmina historici antiqui." E\ery reader of Horace, 

 Persius, and Juvenal knows how general, even from the times of the republic, was the 

 caco'cthes of writmg and reciting verses (cf Hor. Sat. I. 4), and Eumolpus is the per- 

 sonification of this vice. To find in this character a personal satire on Xero, betrays 

 an entire misapprehension of the object of the writer. 



C. 89, the words, " quae Trojae halosin ostendit," remind De Salas immediately of 

 Nero singing, diuing the conflagration of Rome, the taking of Troy. Petronius relates 

 in the following chapter that the spectators stoned Eumolpus. What occurrence in 

 the life of Xero can De Salas quote, to which this treatment of Eumolpus furnishes 

 the parallel ? 



Joannes Sambucus, a native of Hungary, who was born 1.531, and died 1.58-t, in 

 Vienna, in his edition of Petronius, published in 1564, declares his opinion that Petro- 

 nius lived about the time of the Emperor Gallienus, who reigned from 254 to 268 A. D. 

 It would appear, from a remark of his, that, were it not for one cuxumstance, he would 

 have no objection to placing him even later. He says: " Eodem aut paullo ante tem- 

 pore floruisse nostrum non dubito. Xam ex hoc fi-agmento satis apparet rei publicae 

 Romanae a Christianis principibus nullam dum factam fiiisse mutationem." 



Patisson, in his preface to Petronius, 1575, is inclined to believe that the Petronius 

 of Tacitus is our author ; from the mention of him by Terentianus ]\Iaurus, whom he 

 supposes to be the governor of Syene mentioned by Martial, he infers with confidence 

 that Petronius lived before the reign of Domitian. 



!Melchior Goldast von Heimensfelt, one of the best among the earlier editors and 

 commentators of Petronius, 1610 and 1621, considers our author to be the Petronius 

 of Tacitus. 



Some medieeval writers should not be passed by without a notice, who entertained 



