DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Satyricon — Complete" by Petronius Arbiter. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
This is the first modern commentary on Petronius' Satyrica. It begins with basic background information, then surveys each episode in order that leading themes emerge. Finally, it gives an overview of Petronius' use of literary allusion and symbolism, and of his treatment of sex. All Latin and Greek quotations have been translated so that this volume may benefit both students of classical and comparative literature.
Petronius: A Handbook unravels the mysteries of the Satyrica, one of the greatest literary works that antiquity has bequeathed to the modern world. Includes a dozen original essays by a team of leading Petronius and Roman history scholars Features the first multi-dimensional approach to Satyricon studies by exploring the novel's literary structure, social and historic contexts, and modern reception Supplemented by illustrations, plot outline, glossary, map, bibliography, and suggestions for further reading
In The Satyrica of Petronius, Beth Severy-Hoven makes the masterpiece, with its flights of language and vision of Roman culture around the time of Nero, accessible to a new generation of students of Latin.
Few surviving works of classical literature have cast the haunting, hilarious, insightful, and eerie spell conjured by the Satyricon of the Neronian courtier and eventual victim Petronius. Fragmentary, opaque, and enigmatic, at times it seems that deception and obfuscation are the favorite tricks of its author. A Reading of Petronius’ Satyricon offers a fresh look at this genre-defying masterpiece, proceeding episode by episode and scene by scene through a vision of the hell that humanity has fashioned for itself. Petronius mercilessly and exactingly appraises Rome’s embrace of the Golden Age dreams of the Augustan principate, judging his fellow citizens and himself by the yardstick of the Neronian reign that broods over them like an avenging specter. Petronius' Satyricon offers medicine for ambulatory corpses, a prescription that consists of notifying the dead of the diagnosis, and of pointing out the inevitable and eminently logical antidote for those consumed by insatiable hunger and unfulfillable longing. Bitterly sardonic and preternaturally serene, Lee Fratantuono’s reading reveals Petronius to be nothing less than the ultimate literary voice of a dying dynasty, a prose and poetic verbal magician of serious intention, a virtuoso in the art of unmasking the ghoulish horror and inconsolable sadness that lurk often just below the surface of the comic.
Elias of Thriplow, a village near Cambridge, was a schoolmaster in the thirteenth century. Apart from his complete Serium Senectutis, he wrote several works that have survived only as extracts, many of which are extensive. Elias seemingly wrote what has been called Petronius Rediuiuus, a collection of tales and of essays about knights, merchants, women, and farmers. This collection frequently reflects the influence of spicy Petronius, rarely read in the Middle Ages. Elias is important for his criticisms of medieval society, for the history of narrative literature, and for the history of English humanism. This new book offers the first critical edition of all the extracts from Elias and publishes many of these for the first time, with commentary indicating sources for the ideas and language.
The Apocolocyntosis 'Pumpkinification' (instead of deification) is probably by SENECA the wealthy philosopher and courtier (c. 4 B.C.-A.D. 65). It is a medley of prose and verse and a political satire on the Emperor Claudius written soon after he died in A.D. 54 and was deified.
With one exception, the essays which form this book have appeared in various Classical periodicals. They do not claim to present a com prehensive account of Petronius and his work, but are intended to illustrate by discussion some aspects of the work and its author that seem, to me at least, to be of interest. "Did Tacitus quote Petronius" appeared in L'A ntiquiM Classique XXXVII, 2, 1968, 641-643; "On Tacitus' Biography of Petronius" and "Petronius, Priapus and Priapeum LXVIII" in Classica et Mediae valia XXVI 1-2, 1965, 233-245, and XXVII 1-2, 1966, 225-242 respectively; "Some Comments on Petronius' Portrayal of Character" will appear soon in Eranos; "Eating People is Right" appeared in Hermes 97 Bd., 3, 1969,381-384; "Some Themes of Concealment and Pretence in Petronius' Satyricon" in Latomus Tome XXVIII, I, 1969, 99-119; and" Petronius, A Portrait of the Artist" in Symbolae Osloenses XLV, 1970, U8-I28. I wish to thank the editors of these periodicals for their permission to reproduce the articles. Professor J.P. Sullivan was kind enough to let me see the proofs of his book: The Satyricon of Petronius, A Literary Study (London, 1968) before it was published. I acknowledge this with thanks. I wish to acknowledge permission from The Bodley Head to quote from F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night, Bodley Head Scott Fitzgerald, VoL II p. 9I. I wish to thank Mrs. A. Brodie for typing the material, and Mrs. L. Andrew for her help with the proofs.
