﻿72 THE AGE OF PETRONIUS ARBITER. 



Cic. cle Nat. Deor. 2. 50 : " Atque ilia mirabilia ; quid ea, quae nuper, id est, paucis 

 ante seculis medicorum ingeniis reperta sunt?" Here Ave see "nuper" applied to a 

 period of several centuries. 



This passage, then, does not afford much aid in determining the time of the compo- 

 sition of the Satyricon. While it unquestionably refers to a change in the style of 

 eloquence which began m the youth of Cicero and Hortensius, the peculiar signification 

 of " nuper," which, as I have shown, is applied to periods of very unequal extent, does 

 not enable us to ascertain how long a time had expired between the first appearance 

 of this Asiatic eloquence and the time when Petronius wrote. 



3. C. 2. 9 : " Pictura quoquc non alium exitum fecit, postquam Aegyptiorum auda- 

 cia tam magnae artis compendiariam invenit." Besides this rather obscure passage, 

 there are two others, namely, c. 83 and c. 88, the one describing some of the finest 

 pictures, the other relating to the decline of the art, which are in their import too 

 brief and general to throw much light on the question of the age of Petronius. There 

 is, however, no doubt that, in his opinion of the condition of painting in his time, 

 Petronius agrees fully with Pliny. Both represent the art as on the dechne, and very 

 much m the same language. While Petronius says (c. 88. 1): " Erectus his sermonibus, 

 consulere prudentiorem coepi aetates tabularum et quacdam argumcnta mihi obscura 

 simulque causam desidiae praesentis excutere, cum pulcherrimae artes periissent, inter 

 quas pictura ne minimum quidem sui vestigium reliquisset" ; — Pliny uses the following 

 language: (35. 1) "Primumque dicemus, quae restant de pictura, arte quondam nobili"; 

 (35. 2) ^'^ artis desidia 2^<^''didit" ; (35. 11) "Hactenus dictum sit de dignitate artis 

 morientis " ; (35. 37) " Casa Protogenes contentus erat in hortido suo ; nulla in 

 Apellis tectoriis pictura erat ; uondum libebat jjarietes totos tinguere ; omnium eorum 

 ars urbibus excubabat, pictorque res communis terrarum fuit." — " Career ejus artis 

 domus aurea fuit, et ideo non exstant exempla alia magnopere." 



That Petronius speaks from personal knowledge when he mentions the works of 

 Zeuxis, Protogenes, and Apelles, seems to me scarcely to admit of a doubt, if his lan- 

 guage and the character of his remarks be carefully weighed. If he lived at, or before, 

 the time of Pliny, he might have seen several pictures of these masters, which Pliny 

 mentions as still extant in his time. The most distinguished picture of Apelles, who 

 lived between 357 and 309 B. C, the Venus Anadyomene, originally in the Asclepieion 

 in Kos, was by Augustus brought to Rome, and deposited in the temple of D. Julius. 

 In the time of Nero it j)erished by rot, and the emperor caused it to be replaced by a 

 picture of Dorotheus ; whether on the same subject, does not appear. There were at 

 Rome by his hand two other pictures, one a Castor and Pollux Avith a Victoria and 



