﻿THE AGE OF PETRONRS ARBITER. 55 



Petronius — for example, the immorality of pedagogues, tlie wantonness of married and 

 unmarried women, the impudence of legacy-hunters — belong to the same time. Bur- 

 mann concedes that all these vices prevailed in a higher degree in the times of Nero ; 

 but he is of opinion that satirical writings, like those of Petronius, are the offspring 

 of a time Avhen the sway of vice is not yet all-powerful, when there exist yet some 

 remains of former strictness and virtue, engendermg a desire to check the increasing 

 demoralization. He considers Petronius a man of moral purity, and one who had 

 himself reached the height of eloquence by the path which he points out in the com- 

 mencement of the work, and who, for this very reason, could not bear the literary and 

 moral degeneracy of his age.* From these considerations, Burmann comes to the 

 conclusion, that Petronius liA-ed in the reign of Tiberivis, Caligula, and Claudius, and 

 had yet seen the happy times of Augustus-f He is fully convinced that he selected 

 especially Claudius and the crimes of the freedmen, so powerful under that emperor, as 

 the subject-matter of his work. He appeals to Suetonius, Tacitus, Dion, and especially 

 to the satire of Seneca on the death of Claudius, in confirmation of his opinion that 

 many of the traits attributed to Trimalchio are borrowed from Claudius. This is, 

 unquestionably, the weakest part of Bunnann's otherwise so sensible opinion, in which 

 he has suffered himself to be carried away by a fancy. 



It Avas in the year 1821 that Niebuhr, the well-known historian, published his dis- 

 sertation on the age of Curtius and Petronius, from which I have already quoted, — a 

 dissertation which influenced the opmion of many quite as much by the reputation of 

 its author as by the weight and force of its arguments. Two years before, in 1819, it 

 had been discovered that beneath certain heaps of rubbish, in the Villa Pansili, a great 

 number of Roman graves were hidden. This villa is bordered by the highway, the 

 ancient " Via Anrelia." Upon a closer examination, it Avas found that the graves had 

 previously been searched ; but apparently nothing of value Avas found, with the excep- 

 tion of many gravestones with inscriptions, which uidicate that the graves were chiefly 

 those of freedmen, and belonged to the second and third centuries of our era. 



A proof that these graA^es were not unknown to the scholars of earlier times is fur- 

 nished by the fact, that the first inscription fallen in Avith at the last examination is 



* I think Burmann errs in ascribing to Petronius a moral object, — to correct the men of his time. Petro- 

 nius had no other object than to furnish a lively, entertaining, but true, description of certain phases of 

 social life in his own time. 



f " His omnibus ego rite pensitatis Tiberii, Caligulae, et Claudii imperia attigisse Petroniuni puto, immo 

 Augusti adhuc felicia tempora vidisse." Afterwards : " Sedet mihi non infra Claudii tempera hoc opus esse 

 demittendum." 



