﻿52 THE AGE OF PETRONIUS ARBITER. 



persona, the easy, familiar, but still polished and refined language of his o^ii time, 

 which at a later period made its way into literary productions of a more dignified de- 

 scription. The language of conversation of one period is the parent of the style of 

 composition of a succeeding ; and the history of the Imguistic development of almost 

 every nation furnishes illustrations and examples of this fact. 



The result at which Studer, after this examination of the linguistic evidence, arrives, 

 is that the style of Petronius not only does not furnish any satisfactory ground for 

 distrusting the external evidence pointing to the age of Nero, but that the resemblance 

 as to words and phrases between Petronius and Seneca favors the opinion that both 

 belong to the same age. 



The examination of the evidence furnished by the style and language of the book is 

 succeeded by that of the historical evidence. Here, as in the commencement of his 

 dissertation, Studer acts at first polemically, by impugning the arguments of Ignarra 

 and the author of the " Isagoge ad Yolumina Herculanensia," who found in the con- 

 tents of the Satyricon indications of the times of the Antonines. Ignarra, taking it for 

 granted that the colony in which Petronius lays the scene of the earlier portion of 

 his story can be no other place than Naples, and endeavoring to show that Naples did 

 not become a Roman colony until after Commodus, concludes, strangely enough, that 

 the author, Avho according to his own premises should be at least as late as Commodus, 

 belongs to the times of the Antonines. Studer concedes that there is the greatest prob- 

 ability that the colony is Naples, but he denies that there is any e-\ idence whatever as 

 to the time when Naples became a colony; that this change may have taken place 

 under Augustus as well as under Commodus, and consequently no inference can be 

 drawn from this circumstance as to the age of Petronius ; while, on the other hand, if 

 the age of Petronius is detemiined from other sources, it follows as a matter of course 

 that the colonization of Naples is anterior to that point of tune. 



The author of the Isagoge ad Vol. Hercul. infers, from the cuxumstance that the 

 burying of the dead is (c. 111. 2) called a Greek custom, that the book must have 

 been written after the time of the Antonines, because Lucian (De Luctu, c. 21) says 

 that the Greeks burned their dead. Studer observes, very correctly, that it is well 

 established latterly, by the thorough investigation of W. A. Becker (Charicles, Vol. 11. 

 p. 181), that the Greeks used both modes, but the burymg more frequently, while the 

 Romans buried their dead in the earliest times only, and then again after the third 

 century of the Christian era (Gallus, Vol. II. p. 291). Calling burying a Greek custom, 

 it follo^vs that Petronius lived Avhen burning was among the Romans the universal 

 custom, that is, before Apuleius, who speaks of coffins, or Macrobius. 



