Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: Corporealities
- 1 Rhetorical red herrings
- 2 Behind the scenes
- 3 The beast within
- 4 From the horse's mouth
- 5 Bella intestina
- 6 Regurgitating Polyphemus
- 7 Scars of knowledge
- 8 How to eat Virgil
- 9 Ghost stories
- 10 Decomposing rhythms
- Conclusion: Licence and labyrinths
- Appendix I The use of fundere and cognates in the Satyricon
- Appendix II The occurrence of fortuna or Fortuna in the Satyricon
- Appendix III Aen. 4.39 at Sat. 112: nec venit in mentem, quorum consederis arvis?
- Bibliography
- Index of passages discussed
- Index of subjects
5 - Bella intestina
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction: Corporealities
- 1 Rhetorical red herrings
- 2 Behind the scenes
- 3 The beast within
- 4 From the horse's mouth
- 5 Bella intestina
- 6 Regurgitating Polyphemus
- 7 Scars of knowledge
- 8 How to eat Virgil
- 9 Ghost stories
- 10 Decomposing rhythms
- Conclusion: Licence and labyrinths
- Appendix I The use of fundere and cognates in the Satyricon
- Appendix II The occurrence of fortuna or Fortuna in the Satyricon
- Appendix III Aen. 4.39 at Sat. 112: nec venit in mentem, quorum consederis arvis?
- Bibliography
- Index of passages discussed
- Index of subjects
Summary
Many critics have emphasised the connections between Eumolpus' two poems, the Troiae Halosis at Sat. 89 and the Bellum Civile at Sat. 119. The similarities are clear: both poems have the same author, both are about war (indeed, about crucial conflicts in the ideological history of Rome) and both are preceded by moralising speeches lamenting failure in the arts (Sat. 88, Sat. 118). Moreover, as Zeitlin stresses, the two poems are clearly Virgilian:whereas the Troiae Halosis follows the language and narrative of Aeneid II, the Bellum Civile and the narrative site of its composition continually evoke Virgilian and Trojan themes. For example, the poem is written on Lichas' ship during the poetically clichéd sea storm, which is Virgilian in detail and tone; ‘civil war’ on the ship is calmed when Tryphaena argues that this is not the kind of sea journey which starts a Trojan war (non Troius heros / hac in classe vehit decepti pignus Atridae / ‘no Trojan hero carries the bride of Atreus’ cuckold son on this fleet', 108.14 vv. 2–3); like the Trojan horse, the poem is a means of entering a city (Croton, the one-time first city of Italy which looks like a devastated Troy or Rome and is also implicitly compared to Carthage in Sat. 117.8, as if it is being approached by a sea-worn Aeneas in Aen. 1); the images of disease and ruin in the poem itself draw much of their inspiration from Virgil's underworld in Aen. 6;
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- Petronius and the Anatomy of Fiction , pp. 77 - 97Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2002