﻿58 THE AGE OF PETRONIUS ARBITER. 



(Wandmalerei), the passage relating to the disappearance of genuine eloquence, and 

 the descriptions of the overbearing conduct and the incredible riches of freedmen. 

 He doubts the name Petronius, and thinks that this work, unkno-mi to all classical 

 writers, had its origin out of Rome. 



One scholar only, so far as I know, has in our own days made the question of the 

 age of Petronius the subject of a comprehensive investigation. This circumstance, as 

 well as the intrinsic value of the investigation, entitle the author and his work to a 

 somewhat more extended account. This scholar is G. Studer, of Bern, who wrote his 

 paper, Ueher das Zeitalter ties Petronius Arbiter, in 1841, for the Rheinische Museum 

 fur Philologie, in which periodical it appeared in 1843. 



After a brief, but clear and fair account, of the labors of his predecessors on this 

 topic, Studer begins his own Avork with the examination of the passage of Tacitus in 

 Ann. 16, c. 17-20, and comes to the conclusion that not only our author, Petronius 

 Arbiter, is the consular Petronius, the friend and companion of Nero, whose life and 

 character are in that passage described by Tacitus, but that the Satyricon is the com- 

 munication which the consular, before his death, transmitted to Nero. In maintaining 

 this opinion, he attaches great weight to two circumstances ; first, that Tacitus, when 

 attributing to Petronius the designation " elegantiae arbiter," uses the very word which 

 appears in the manuscripts as the surname of our author ; and second, that Tacitus, 

 in the words, " flagitia principis sub nominibus exoletorum feminarumque et novitate 

 cujusque stupri perscripsit," hints at the contents of the Satyricon. 



After having thus stated his own conviction, Studer enters upon a refutation of those 

 who do not recognize the identity of the author of the Satyricon and the Petronius of 

 Tacitus. Briefly alluding to Sambucus and Lipsius, he assails, with more or less suc- 

 cess, the arguments of Hadi'ian Yalesius. He takes particular pains to meet Valesius's 

 position, that, while the communication sent by Petronius to Nero was of small extent, 

 containing, not fictitiou.s occurrences, but historical facts relating to Nero, the Satyricon 

 was a voluminous work, filled with fictitious occui'rences, embracing, after the fashion 

 of the Varronian Satura, the manners and doings of society at large, lamenting the 

 decline of art and letters, satirizing the absurdities of poets and rhetoricians, of freed- 

 men and legacy-hunters, introducing longer and shorter poems, — all of which is at 

 variance with the statement of Tacitus concerning the writmg addressed by Petronius 

 to Nero. Studer adverts to the circumstance that Tacitus, in stating that Petronius 

 sent to Nero a description of his debaucheries, instead of the customary " codicilli," 

 says nothing of the size or extent of the writing. He further insists that Tacitus, by 

 using the words, " flagitia principis . . . perscripsit," did not intend to describe the 



