﻿66 THE AGE OF PETROHIUS ARBITER. 



peculiar character, the first elegantly, the second bombastically, the third vulgarly.* 

 No small jjart of the value of the book consists in the mixture, not only of different 

 styles, but of provincial and dialectic specimens of language, which, as no other literary 

 monument, make us acquainted with one form of the 'sermo plebeius.' On the one 

 hand, the prose in which the author narrates is related to the language and phra- 

 seology of the silver age, especially of Seneca, with this exception, that this correct 

 language with studied abandon runs into the easy flow of the language of conversation, 

 and, tinged with Grecisms, nay, e\eii provincialisms, in the manner of a man of the 

 world, aims at the highest degree of sensual, nay, offensive truth ; hence the abun- 

 dance of proverbs f and popular forms of expression, the sparkling flow of wit, and 

 the reckless plainness of speech and humor. On the other hand, there is the vulgar 

 language of Campania and Xaplcs, a double-tongued idiom, in which uneducated 

 people are truthfully represented to use grammatical terminations and forms of sen- 

 tences derived from the Greek, and many strange, droll, and plebeian words drawn 

 from nature, and not from the school, which contributes materially to produce a 

 pleasing effect. Looking upon the greater part of the subject-matter, the nude de- 

 scription of debaucheries, of filthy adventures and immoral desires, however instructive 

 it is as regards the character of the lower classes of voluptuous Lower Italy, and their 

 manners and mode of thmking, would repel and weary rather than attract ; but the 

 talent and humor which impart interest to this disgusting subject, and revel, with 

 fantastic gayety, in pictures of the lowest form of life, the humorous hilarity and epi- 

 ciu'ean feeling which carelessly pass from the serious to the jocose, and yet, in the 

 midst of their sensual tendencies, are not alien to higher aims, surprise, and formerly 

 secured to Petronius the favor of people of refinement and taste. "NYe are astonished 

 at the pertness and independent irony of the Neapolitan Eulenspiegel, who, full of 

 jests, despises morality, and can even endure the air of brothels. It is evident that 

 , such a production, even if it was enlarged in the hands of the public, must have pro- 



* Bernhardy seems to me to attach an undue importance to Trimalchio, by representing him as one of 

 the three principal characters of the storj-, influenced, perhaps, by the relation which the " Coena Trimal- 

 chionis " bears to the whole as it now exists. Considering that possibly we have not more than one tenth 

 of the original work left, it is quite reasonable to suppose that the relative importance of this episode, inval- 

 uable as it is in many respects, was a veiy different one in the original complete work. The same circum- 

 stance gives now a prominence to Trimalchio himself, which probably he had not in the complete work. 

 Several characters are alluded to which were undoubtedly as prominent figures as Trimalchio now ap- 

 pears ; for instance, Tryphoena and Lycas, both, like Trimalchio, representatives of entire classes of society. 



+ I doubt whether more than two instances of proverbs (c. 47. 8 and c. 83. 7) can be adduced as occur- 

 ring in the narrative or the conversation of Encolpius. 



