﻿54 THE AGE OF PETRONItJS ARBITER. 



states that lie gave an account of debaucheries, naming the persons concerned, while 

 in the Satyricon the names are fictitious. These tablets having been sent to Nero 

 sealed, it is not probable that he preserved them. 



Burmami controverts the "s-iew of the Valesii, who place Petronius in the time of the 

 Antonini,* and believe him to have been a Gaul by birth. He considers the elegance 

 of style and the state of morals described by Petronius as opposed to that \iew. Ex- 

 pressions which seem to indicate a later age, occurring in the part describing the ban- 

 quet of Trimalchio, and some other portions of the book, are purposely chosen by 

 Petronius to be in keeping with the characters he introduces, — inhabitants of a Cam- 

 panian colony, low, vulgar, half-Greek freedmen. "SMiile he concedes that, in other 

 parts of the work, there are some few peculiarities of language which cannot be justi- 

 fied by the authority of the best contemporary writers, he observes that this is a charge 

 brought against many other writers ; for example, against Li^7 by PoUio, who accuses 

 him of pata^inity, and against Cicero himself by StatUius Maximus. That some of the 

 peculiar expressions of Petronius occur in later writers, may be owing to the preference 

 given by these writers to Petronius. He applies this remark more particularly to the 

 monks, who, with a hypocritical exterior, read with relish the most indecent passages. 

 Nay, he goes so far as to account, by this depraved taste of the monks, for the fact that 

 so large a portion of the indecent parts of the work have been preserved, and rejects 

 the view of Peter Daniel and Ritterhusius, who ascribe the loss of so large a portion 

 of the work to a natural desire of pure-minded men not to perpetuate such indecencies ; 

 so that, according to his opinion, what we have left is the most indecent, according to 

 Daniel and Ritterhusius the most decent part. He quotes Salmasius, who, in his 

 preface to L. Ampelius, expresses a similar opinion.-]- 



The subjects of complamt and censiu-e, such as the corruption of eloquence, the 

 decline of the art of painting, the degeneracy of poetry, refer, according to Burmann's 

 opinion, to the time immediately after Augustus or Tiberius. The vices described by 



* Burmann is not quite accurate in this statement. Hadrianus Valesius places Petronius in the times of 

 the Antonini (138-180 A. D.), but his brother, Henry Valesius, in the time of Gallienus (253-268 A. D.). 



t " Ita conservatus est elegantium nequitiarum curiosis Petronius Arbiter. Quod enini ex ejus satyrico 

 habemus, mera excerpta sunt alicujus studiosi, qui, quae ad gustum suum in illo auctore invenerat, eodem, 

 quo opus legebat, ordine adversariis suis commendavit ac commisit. Qui putant a monachis sic eviratum 

 esse, vehementer errant. Qualis haec esset castratio, quae resectis a reliquo corpore membris vel potius 

 ipso corpore abjecto, solas pudendas partes reliquisse videatur ? Certe quae desiderantur, vix videri possunt 

 salaciora ac nequiora fuisse his, quae relicta sunt. Immo ista nulkim procacitatis et protervitatis vTrep/SoXijv 

 vel ipsis lenonibus usurpandam reliquam faciunt." 



