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Disintegrated Assurances: The Contemporary American Response to the Satyricon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

John Wright
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Extract

In an essay published in a recent issue of Greece & Rome, P.G. Walsh examines the views of the American scholars Gilbert Highet, Helen Bacon, and William Arrowsmith and comes to the very sensible conclusion that they are wrong in believing that Petronius Arbiter had any moral purpose in writing the Satyricon. While ultimately it may prove impossible for one side in this debate to convince the other, Walsh's arguments, and the way he goes about propounding them, can provide us with some illuminating hints as to why the Petronius controversy arose in the first place. And there are unexplored aspects to the terms on which the argument is being conducted which, when examined and carefully considered, may point the way toward a possible resolution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , April 1976 , pp. 32 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1976

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References

NOTES

1. (New York 1970), 9.

2. Walsh, P. G., G & R 21 (1974), 181 ff.Google Scholar The three articles are Highet, G., TAPA 72 (1941), 176 ff.Google Scholar; Bacon, H., Virginia Quarterly Review 34 (1958), 262 ff.Google Scholar; and Arrowsmith, W., Arion 5.3 (1966), 304 ff.Google Scholar

3. Arrowsmith's essay is later (1966), but it still (especially when the usual delays of publication are considered) falls outside the period examined in Bellow's novel; furthermore, the only contemporary references it contains are to literature and the cinema.

4. The date in fact can be determined even more precisely from political and other references on pp. 31, 65, and 92 of the novel (above, n. 1); the time of the action is April 1969.

5. The Petronian Society first met, as far as I can determine, in December 1970.

6. Fitzgerald's original title for his novel was Trimalchio;, I have been reminded of this very suggestive parallel by my colleague Stuart Small.

7. See Sullivan, J. P., The Satyricon of Petronius. A Literary Study (Bloomington, Ind., 1968), 111, n. 1.Google Scholar But present-day students' interest is more likely to have begun with Fellini's film: an interesting illustration of changes in cultural patterns.

8. The Date and Author of the Satyricon (Leiden 1971), 49 ff.

9. I cite for convenience two essays which appear in a volume to which I shall be referring later: Ahl, F. M., TAPA 102 (1971), 1 ff.Google Scholar (includes an examination of Nero's relations with his court), and M. E. K. Thornton, ibid. 621 ff. (on Nero's economics); for Nero's originality as an artistic patron see MacDonald, W. L., The Architecture of the Roman Empire i: An Introductory Study (New Haven 1965), 41 ff.Google Scholar

10. Ann. 16. 18–19.

11. TAPA 102 (1971), 656, n. 59.

12. Sullivan, (above, n. 6), 116 ff.Google Scholar

13. Latin Satire: The Structure of Persuasion (Leiden 1970), 153–5. Witke responds directly to Sullivan's position on p. 153, n. 2.

14. New York Magazine 8. 19 (12 May 1975), 88, 91.

15. The New Yorker 51.12 (12 May 1975), 110.

16. Walsh (above, n. 2), 186. Though the first phrase I quote is set by Walsh in the form of a question, he goes on to answer it, by implication and with some reservations, in the affirmative.

17. Few modern readers, I suppose, would expect a demonstration of the seriousness of Ulysses, but its author has been attacked in terms curiously similar to those cited here. Wyndham Lewis, for example, wrote that Joyce ‘is become so much a writing-specialist that it matters very little to him what he writes, or what idea or world-view he expresses, so long as he is trying his hand at this manner and that, and displaying his enjoyable virtuosity. Strictly speaking, he has … no special point of view, or none worth mentioning’ (Time and Western Man [New York, 1928], 90).

18. Sullivan, (above, n. 7), 267.Google Scholar

19. Zeitlin, (above, n. 11), 645.Google Scholar

20. Gibbon i.3.