﻿124 THE AGE OF PETRONIUS ARBITER. 



If it were necessary or desirable to define my opinion on the subject still more 

 precisely tlian I have done, I should say, that while I am not prepared to deny that the 

 book may have been written in the reign of Tiberius previously to the year 34, I am 

 inclined to think that the adventures related belong to the time of Augustus. Besides 

 the circumstances already mentioned, and a general impression produced by an un- 

 biassed perusal of the book, — an impression which is more easily felt than described, 

 — I would more especially refer to the political spirit of the humbler dramatis jiersonae, 

 a certain sturdy independence marking their sentiments and language (see, for instance, 

 the conversation of Ganymedes in c. 44), which lingered yet, at least in the country, 

 during the milder autocracy of Augustus, but which was totally crushed out by the 

 sterner despotism of Tiberius. But as the object of this branch of the investigation 

 is to ascertain by historical evidence, and not by personal impressions, the time of the 

 composition of the Satyricon, I am willing to abide by the above-stated result, — that it 

 is to be placed between the years 6 and 34 A. D. 



Linguistic Evidence. 



Having finished the examination of the first kind of evidence — the historical — which 

 has a bearing on the inquiry as to the age of Petronius, and having stated the result to 

 which that examination has led, I now turn to the second, the linguistic evidence. It 

 has above (p. 68) been stated, that by linguistic evidence I understand phenomena of 

 language, 'svhether consisting in the use of certain words and expressions and of certain 

 grammatical forms and mflections, or in the structure of the sentences and what is 

 more particularly understood by the term style, — which phenomena, when compared 

 with the language of writers whose age is known, may aid in obtaining a satisfactory 

 answer to the question to what age Petronius belongs. 



In entering upon this inquiry, we meet at the very threshold with a great difiiculty, 

 arising from the peculiar and singular nature of the Satyricon. It is a miique book ; 

 there is not another like it in the whole body of Roman literature, so far as it has been 

 preserved. The Metamorphoses of Apulejus, a work with which it may in one respect 

 be classed, inasmuch as it is likewise a novel, or prose fiction, is so different in its 

 plan and execution, and so peculiar m its language and style, that it affords no aid 

 whatever in the solution of our problem. If Ave attempt to compare the Satyricon 

 with works in other departments of literature, — the only comparison that can be made, 

 — it is at once apparent that the result must in a great degree be unsatisfactory, for 

 the very reason that the works compared belong to different departments of literature, 

 each of which has its own rules and laws of composition. 



